


The Waiting Game

by inoctavo



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Art History, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, F/M, Gen, Painting, Post-CDTH, Story within a Story, The Barns (Raven Cycle), art therapy but not really, attempting to talk about your feelings without talking about your feelings, how to stop repressing your feelings: a manual, lynch brothers, references to canonical deaths, until the next book is released
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inoctavo/pseuds/inoctavo
Summary: When all they can do is wait, Declan’s mind catastrophizes… then tries to plan for them. It’s a good recipe to make more problems when everyone’s gone around the emotional ringer. Featuring existential crises, denial, tough decisions, Declan meeting Opal for the first time, and Jordan painting Declan like one of her French girls.
Relationships: Declan Lynch & Matthew Lynch, Declan Lynch & Orphan Girl | Opal, Jordan & Declan Lynch & Matthew Lynch, Jordan/Declan Lynch
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32
Collections: TRC Big Bang 2020





	1. The Last Five Yards

**Author's Note:**

> This fic began with one of the prompts anonymously submitted to the bang about Jordan/Declan and "paint me like one of your french girls." Thank you, submitter, whoever you may be. For such a suggestive/positive prompt, this fic became much more introspective and about giving the characters the space to process everything they just went through in CDTH. This is the longest complete work I've written in some time, and I hope you all enjoy it. As with any bang, this was a team effort, and I'd like to give thanks where thanks are due:
> 
> First, my artist [Lena](https://lenaisanerd.tumblr.com/). She is incredible and amazing. Not only did she make two complete pieces for this fic, including one that incorporates an art style referenced in the fic, she helped on some of the art/technical references so that this fic, hopefully, makes better sense artistically speaking. Any remaining errors are mine. 
> 
> Second, my beta [Emjen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla). This fic would not make as much sense or be as well written without her repeated edits, comments, and support. Her attention to detail and grammar is incredible.
> 
> I also have a shoutout for [kieranfae](https://kieranfae.tumblr.com/) who helped me find artists who fit what I wanted to do with this fic, even before anyone was matched to teams. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading this, and thank you to the mods of this year's TRC Big Bang for their hard work.

The unlabeled boundary line for the Barnes eased one anxiety and let another leap forward. A glance down at his phone still showed the animated ellipses hopping on his screen. This old European contact was the only one showing any sign of response, but Declan had already tapped the screen five times waiting for a message. A stern glance did nothing to speed the process. Declan didn’t immediately notice they had stopped, but when his back thumped into his seat, he glanced to the side. A narrow country road bisected skeleton trees just shy of the property line into the Barns. The fall foliage was dying and dropping. That shielded everything else from view, the same as it had on his last visit. It felt eerie, like the shadows were Ronan’s nightwash and the trees were dying. Ronan hadn’t dreamt the trees. Even if they could drip nightwash the way Matthew had… Declan focused and scanned for something out of place, some danger. Matthew reached for the auxiliary cable, and Declan pushed Matthew’s hand away out of habit. His stomach burned, but nothing jumped out.

His attention then snapped toward Jordan for any sign of the trance-like state dreams had a disposition toward. Her knuckles were pale where they squeezed the steering wheel. Veins bulged underneath the flower tattoos around her neck. Her facial expression was stony as she stared straight ahead. “Jordan?” Declan ventured. The heater hissed as it spat out engine heated air. “Jordan!” he insisted.

“Fuck this,” she said and shifted into reverse. The car began backing up at 5, 10, 13 miles an hour.

When she didn’t use the mirror or turn her head to look behind the car, Declan did. No one and nothing was behind them. The car aligned with the road. No damage done. Infuriating as it had been to leave Ronan and Hennessy unprotected, alone, their part of this plan had been a simple and direct task—drive to the Barns and wait. They were failing at the finish line. “Jordan,” Declan repeated, “Stop.” There was nothing for them the way they had come. Only danger and death.

The car halted and rocked them back and forth. Silence—or the closest thing to it with the quiet hum of the irritatingly upbeat synth pop from headphones—smothered the car. Declan did not understand what part of “drive to the Barns” was so difficult. Had Jordan decided waiting was optional? He wasn’t eager for the drive to be over either. Until they were at the Barns, they were still in motion. He could procrastinate on some of the anxiety and tedium of waiting. Declan confirmed again no one was around them, no shadowy figures hid behind trees, and there was no sign the property was going up in flames. It was only the driveway to his childhood home. His stomach was uneasy, the same as it had for years.

Matthew sighed from the back seat and grew more quiet. Declan reached back and brushed curls off his face, as though it could soothe any part of Matthew’s identity crisis or fear for his life. He glanced between the two of them: they were pale, sweaty, and unsettled. More than they had before.

“What’s the matter? Let’s work the problem,” Declan said.

“You didn’t feel that?” Jordan asked. Finally she turned to face him. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated like this was the middle of the night, instead of late morning.

“What did you feel?” Declan asked. He would keep asking until she explained. She had given off a lost impression since they parted ways with Hennessy, but they hadn’t known each other long enough for him to tell if this was more lost.

“The worst…” Jordan motioned forward toward the empty road. “It’s like seeing all the girls’ bodies again. Hennessy dreaming. The horror and panic… Nearly drowning…”

Declan stared at her blankly. “It felt the same as this whole drive has felt,” he said. They stared at each other the way people must have stared at the Tower of Babel. There were words words words but no understanding.

In the resounding silence that sat between the two front seats, Matthew leaned between them. One earbud swung forward even after he stopped. “It makes me feel like I don’t have internal organs,” he contributed. The silence stretched on. Jordan squinted at Matthew. Declan didn’t want to explain it to her. One existential crisis was enough for a car.

“Can you drive us the rest of the way to the Barns?” Declan asked. Jordan's hands tightened on the wheel, like it was the only thing keeping her alive. It had been a lure, her reward for doing what Hennessy asked, for Hennessy’s sake. Her knuckles paled again, and faint synth pop filled the car from the loose headphone. Declan waited with one eye on the rearview mirror, in case someone came up behind them while they straddled the border between public and private property.

Jordan sighed. “Switch seats with me,” she said.

Declan nodded, an acknowledgement. He unbuckled his seat belt, opened his car door, and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side. By the time he opened the door, Jordan had wiggled her way across into the passenger seat. They closed their car doors at the same time.

He fastened the seat belt, still warm. He turned toward her and waited until she did the same. Taking a deep breath, as Jordan and Matthew held theirs, Declan proceeded at 5 miles per hour. It permitted him to check Jordan out of the side of his eye and Matthew in the rearview mirror. Even before they crossed the boundary line, her eyes closed, her face scrunched up, and her neck tightened. She sat stiff and rigid. The only sound came from the backseat, a quiet mewling that wrenched Declan’s heart. Matthew was tearing up but bearing it bravely. He wiped away snot with the edge of his sleeve and whispered half-hearted fragments, as he failed to soothe himself.

Declan was in the farmhouse, as Aurora repeated the same few tasks and motions over and over and over. Her focus caught on every little detail out of place—dishes scattered around the kitchen, the closet door ajar, the dying flowers in a vase. Declan. Her repeated attention demonstrated the quiet truth—Declan wasn’t part of life at the Barns. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Soon Matthew and Jordan would be like Aurora. Then Declan wouldn’t belong anywhere or with anyone. He closed his eyes and breathed. It had been two years since Aurora had fallen asleep. Since this memory. It was only a memory. Memories were lies. Declan could handle lies. He lived and breathed them. It was just one more lie.

He opened his eyes. His stomach still felt the urge to dry heave, and acid burned at his throat. Rough uneven breathing filled the car along with the faint ghost of remixed music. Declan checked the speedometer—still an even 5 miles per hour—and his mirrors. They were alone. Returning to the Barns had always felt like time itself had shifted, looping back to earlier parts of his life. Lately, that feeling had manifested literally. It didn’t last that long. The car’s clock had only ticked up one minute when they burst out of that horrific bubble.

Jordan and Matthew both heaved a sigh of relief. Declan kept observing them. They were both moderately distressed and completely aware of it.


	2. Artificial To-Do List

With a soft crunch of gravel, the volvo pulled around up toward the ranch house. Unlike the beaten car facing the porch, Declan parked neatly nose pointed out. He didn’t want to lose precious seconds backing out during a crisis. It was an empty drive, not a packed parking lot crowded with aggressive and inattentive parking jobs. Parking was rather easy. Escape by car was limited, if someone showed up. Should they get down the drive, through the dream barrier that had vexed Jordan and Matthew, and approach the Barns, they could stop their vehicle to blockade the road. Au revoir to the only easy vehicular exit. Seconds were sometimes the difference between life and death. Even should they end up running away across the Barns on foot, Declan still couldn’t break the habit.

His eyes flickered to the other car. Making as little noise as possible, Declan exited the car. Stiff and uneasy, Jordan got out from the other side. Matthew, tears streaking down his face, crawled out last. “Let's get into the house,” Declan said. “Chop chop.” This open entry hadn’t felt safe since Niall’s body had been found in the driveway. It was exposed, barren of life, and crossed with steps that crunched like bone. The door opened with a soft squeak, and Declan waved Jordan and Matthew through. Matthew led Jordan into the living room, as good a room as any. Declan gave them a nod. “I’ll make tea. Be back shortly.”

Declan circled the rest of the first floor. No one had been in any room, closet, or behind a large curtain. In the kitchen, the kettle stood, unused, and sighed when filled with water and brought to the stove. Despite the dangers of an open flame, Declan left it there. It would whistle a jaunty tune once it boiled. Instead he headed to the stairs, climbing them with slow, steady steps. At the top, Declan stopped and listened. From downstairs, there was a soft crash and quiet conversation. If anyone were upstairs, they were staying quiet. Declan checked each room in turn. Their parents’ bedroom and master bath was clean, as was Matthew’s. Ronan had left the toilet seat up in the hall bathroom. Ronan’s room smelled worse and made a more chaotic tableau. More clothes were on the floor, and a rank empty can of beans sat on the nightstand. Declan eyed it but turned toward the last door.

Nothing marked the plain wooden door as any different than the bedrooms for his brothers, but Declan approached it with more caution. It was the last possible room—he had checked the hall closet, filled only with towels and sheets—for an intruder. Worse, it was the only one that had a weapon in it. Standing to the side of the door, he turned the knob and pushed the door open. No bullets emptied into the wall across the hall. After a moment, Declan stepped in.

His room was the opposite of Ronan’s. Like Matthew’s, it was stripped to its bones, less occupied than houses staged for sale. Not even photographs of Ireland graced its rough homesy walls. At the nightstand, the lamp’s cord trailed behind the bed. There wasn’t an outlet there, but heavy lifting was required to prove it. The pillow was askew on the bed, the only difference since Declan had last seen it. He frowned and checked the closet—still only filled with suits and starched shirts—before he exposed his back to check the bed.

The gun was in the pillow case, rather than under the pillow where Declan had left it. The safety was on. Ronan had clearly borrowed it, and Declan worried what that could imply. Still, it pleased him that his brother had done more to protect himself than fall asleep and risk uncontrolled violence and property damage. He checked the magazine and chamber, all bullets accounted for. Either a false alarm, or Ronan had reloaded the gun. Or Ronan was shooting his weapon at windmills. At least it was clean and ready to use in an emergency.

He opened his sock drawer for the gun’s holster and for his backup weapon, a smaller piece. He clipped the holster to his belt and stowed the first gun there. The second he took with him from the room. When he had crossed the threshold and closed the door, Declan let out a sigh of relief. Nothing good remained in that room. There had never been anything good in that room. The door wasn’t enough to secure a place of refuge, and it still winked its secrets, no matter how deeply Declan hid them. The Barns was a walking time bomb, ready to expose his family to anyone who stayed longer than five minutes. His room was no exception.

Relaxed by the quiet and absence of any intruders, Declan grabbed the can from Ronan’s room and brought it down to the kitchen with him. He set the spare holster and gun on the counter to rinse the can of beans and to drop it, far too loudly, into the empty recycling bin. Declan peeked into the trash and sighed. He wasn’t going to sort through it. By then, an upbeat Irish melody was whistling over the stove. Declan pulled down three mugs, dropping a teabag in each one, and filled them with water. It wasn’t as strong as an espresso or even a latte. They weren’t options as no one had bought a replacement for the coffee machine that had stopped working that Wednesday in June. He tucked the second holster under his arm and picked up the mugs.

The handles, all three of them, fit in one hand. With a firm grip and even steps, Declan carried them to the living room. Matthew sat huddled on a sofa, a blanket pulled tight around him. Jordan wandered about, eyeing a chair, then a rug, then something else. They both turned to Declan when he came in, and Matthew sighed softly. Had he feared it would be someone else? Declan approached his brother first. Matthew took a mug, and Declan brushed back one of his curls. Matthew looked straight at Declan, as though he held the answer to some question. It could have been:  _ what would happen next? Were Ronan and Hennessy going to be okay? How different am I from anything found here? _ Declan only knew the answer to the last one but lacked the words to say it, without worrying Matthew further.

Jordan crossed the room and took the second mug, her fingers brushing against his. Their eyes met, and Declan hated how much he wanted to comfort her. He didn’t simply see his mother, Aurora, a lover’s dream, or his brother, Matthew, a dreamer’s pure love. Jordan was different from the dead girls he had seen in the manor, from June, the one who had sacrificed herself for them to escape. She was different from Hennessy, the girl she looked identical to, her dreamer. Declan also remembered the way she had gotten, the fuzzy discombobulated state only dreams entered. It was as foreign to him as Ronan’s dreams.

“We should be safe here,” Declan said. It wasn’t quite a lie, but many things weren’t as they should be. Declan should have had a better plan, any other plan, besides the one to let his brother drive away to enter the haunted dreams of another dreamer and call for the aid of someone so feared that people at the Fairy Market wouldn’t say his name. The name that even scared the thing in Hennessy’s dreams—something already dangerous enough to kill her, to kill a dreamer. Even if this plan worked, even if the Lace didn’t kill Ronan or Hennessy and Bryde came as he said he would, Declan doubted any of them were safe. Declan couldn’t observe what haunted dreams, but he would bet his life Bryde would destroy his brother or Hennessy just as the certainly as the Lace would.

He took a sip of tea and sat on the couch next to Matthew. When he blinked, the image of an arm separated from its body seared his eyelids. There was still more to do. “I’m going to check out the Barns and some of the grounds,” Declan said. He blew across his mug to cool it faster.

“All right,” Jordan said. She downed her tea, scrunching up her nose, and stood. She stared back at him, waiting.

Declan glanced at Matthew and held his face neutral. He drank larger gulps of the tea; it still burned his tongue. Matthew looked between the two of them and frowned. He turned to Declan, opened his mouth, and closed it again. Pulling out his phone, he started playing music. Matthew also tugged one earbud out and tucked it away, a sign he wasn’t ignoring them. Just uneasy.

Finishing the last of his tea, Declan set it down on a coaster on the coffee table, stood, and motioned Jordan to join him in the hall. He gave a long glance back at Matthew before he spoke. “The property is fairly large. The visibility is poor,” he told her. “But I’ll be coming back from over that rise, up toward the door at the back of the house. If you hear someone coming up the front, it will not be me.” He took out the holster and held it out. “Do you know how to use one?”

Jordan scanned the view out the window and turned back at Declan. She took the holster, pulled out the gun, checked it over, made sure the safety was on, and clipped it at her side. “Yeah,” she said, as though the question still needed answering. The demonstrated confidence was attractive. “I’ll be your backup.” It didn’t sound like a question.

“It won’t be dangerous,” Declan said. It wasn’t a lie unless something happened. He paused, weighing how much he wanted to tell her about the place. “I’m going to set up our alternate exit and check the way between there and here,” he said. “You see that old beater next to my car?” he motioned out the window, “If it still runs, I’m going to park it near an accessible border.” 

Jordan checked out the cars and the view from the window. “I don’t see any other exit,” she said, glaring at the drive.

“There isn’t one, not for cars,” Declan said. “We’d have to walk there.” Hopefully to the car. So they didn’t need to steal one and hotwire it. Without a road, it wouldn’t project their destination. They would have a better chance of trying to lose some of their followers.

She stared at the road, disappearing into bare limbed trees. “So you’re driving through that again.”

The last fifty feet into the Barns had been notably unpleasant. “Yes,” Declan said.

She huffed and glanced back at Matthew. “You wanted me to stay here, to make sure he’s safe, yeah?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Fine,” Jordan said. They separated. Declan left the room while she returned to the sofa, to Matthew. As he opened the front door, Declan heard Matthew ask, “Do you have internal organs?”


	3. An Unexpected Ally

It was a short drive. The highway wrapped around the corner of the Barns, and it's belt of normal Viginian green protected the property. Declan parallel parked in the turn out near the creek, the easiest place to reenter the Barns. Leaving Parrish’s car in public risked drawing some attention, whether from tourists or the sheriff’s department. A small path trailed into the trees from the middle of the turnout, shadowy even in the day’s light. The dirt was damp and quiet under his steps. It had been so long since Declan had walked this path toward the creek bordering the Barns. Memories crowded in: observing people—normal people—visiting the creek, living their normal lives, and doing normal people things. None of them had the trials and tribulations life at the Barns brought with it; their lives weren’t secrets.

The dark creek flowed darker than his memory, so black it could hide horrible dream things. Declan considered the possibility. Ronan had placed some measure of protection on the drive off the road to the Barns. If he were being thorough he would have done something to the water too. Filled it with a magical being. Made it uncrossable. In the end, Declan did not have the time to walk around to the front entrance. Eyeing the water, he leapt across it, stumbling a step or two on the other side.

Movement on this side of the creek caught his attention. Declan drew the gun and slipped the safety off, pointing it toward the ground as he searched for the source. A small girl skittered into view out of the bushes. A white cap topped her head, her legs were hairy, and her feet were not feet at all. Declan blinked. What had Ronan dreamt? “What are you?” Declan asked, kindly not aiming the gun at her. Possibly she could be the security system in faun form. His brother would do something like that.

“I’m an excellent dreamthing,” it replied in a young girl’s voice. She still hadn’t blinked and just stared at him. Declan stared back at her. Her hands rubbed at her eyes, and she stared at him further. Finally, she sighed, with all the drama small children excelled at. “I’m a psychopomp, and you’re animalness.”

That didn’t make things much clearer. “I’m not dead. I’m alive,” Declan said. “You can guide someone else to the afterlife.”

She stared at him, gnawing on the sleeve of her sweater. “Wrong world,” she replied. “I’m good at  _ dreaming _ .”

“Okay,” Declan accepted that at face value. He had seen enough. So he began taking steps again, flipping the gun’s safety on as he walked past her. Noisy steps followed him. The psychopomp came alongside him, staring intensely at him. He waited for something to happen. Whatever she was, she was Ronan’s. That didn’t make something safe, but Declan wasn’t going to shoot her, so he returned the gun to its holster to free his hands. The quickest way back was to return to the driveway, rather than around the back of the Barns. Weighing the matter, Declan took the longer way. They wouldn’t have time to check it out if they had to use it.

“The house is that way,” the psychopomp said, pointing toward the drive.

“It’s also this way,” Declan said. “I know where I’m going.”

She stared at the fields and back at Declan. “Where are you going?”

“To the back door,” Declan answered. He wasn’t sure why he answered her. The ‘excellent dreamthing’ was walking with him. Though Ronan was far away, dreaming, this strange dream of his meant he wasn't dead yet. Her company made him feel closer.

“Why are you coming from the creek?” she asked.

He glanced sideways, considering. There was a non-zero chance Jordan and Matthew would have to flee ahead of him. None of the reasons for that particularly boosted his confidence in the odds they would survive. “Bad men might come here. We—Matthew, Jordan, and I—might need to get away by crossing the creek,” he explained. “Do you think you can remember this way there?”

“Yes,” she snorted. Offended.

“All right. If bad men come, I need you to guide them to the creek and down the path to the car I parked,” Declan spoke with a soft voice, one he most often used with Matthew. The goat girl was ten, maybe twelve. If she were a person.

“Who’s Jordan?” she asked. She turned in a circle, like Jordan might materialize in front of them. Or like someone else might.

“Jordan is a woman we came here with. A friend,” Declan said. “She’s at the house with Matthew.” He motioned where they were going.

The dream thing was quiet for a few moments, chewing it over. Chewing her lips, then a branch she tore off a passing bush. “I can do that,” she said. “Declan.”

He had already been facing her, so he didn’t swivel his head in surprise. In fact, Declan felt all expression melt off his face: no frown or smile, instead bland and even. She observed him intently, looking for something. The silence stretched on, their steps slow, slowing, stopped. They examined each other. His stomach curdled, but he focused on his breathing. It was more readily tamed. He slowed down or squashed any reactions she might see. Dream things could be dangerous, and she was too close to draw the gun if she manifested Ronan’s anger issues. “You know my name,” Declan said, speaking so each word held weight, heavy with the silence between it and the next one, “because Ronan knows my name.” It made sense. She knew what he knew, and Ronan knew both Declan’s name and how to ambush him.

“Ronan knows my name, but you don’t,” she said. She was Ronan’s. Of course she had a name. Declan exhaled evenly, but her shape, her clothes, told him nothing. His brother had named a raven Chainsaw. She could be Screwdriver. Or Powerdrill. Or something that wasn’t even a word at all.

“What’s your name?” Declan asked.

She held his gaze. Declan met it and waited, hands slipped into his pockets. He waited more patiently than his brother or anything Ronan could dream. A moment slipped by, splitting around them, and rejoining on the far side.

“I’m Opal,” she declared. “Bad men  _ and _ women?”

“Some of them are women, yes,” Declan replied.

She resumed their walk. “The Barns aren’t safe,” she said.

Shocked, he blinked and glanced around them. No danger lunged out of the brush with fairy tale timing. “That’s why I have to be ready. I need somewhere else to take Matthew and Jordan if…” Declan didn’t speak his fear aloud. “If it comes to that.”

They walked side by side, not saying anything for a minute or two. She had agreed to help get Matthew and Jordan out, if that were a possibility, if that bought them time. They depended on their dreamers, but as Declan had explained to Matthew recently, they could still die other ways. The girls splattered around the mansion testified to that. He focused, and his breathing remained slow and even.

“You could take them to Lindenmere,” Opal said at last. It clearly meant something, but Declan had never heard of it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and googled it: a summer camp in Pennsylvania, a bed and breakfast on Long Island. Neither sounded right.

“Lindenmere,” Declan said it the same way she had.

“You could get there a lot faster than me at flat smashing car speed,” she explained.

She wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t helpful information. “What is Lindenmere?” Declan asked. “How will I know I’m there?”

She drew a large breath, held it, and blew a raspberry at him. “It’s a dream, stupid,” Opal said. Declan had gathered as much. When he stared at her, waiting for more information, she leaned down for a handful of grass. “It’s a forest, and it’s far more obvious than I am. You’ll know when you’re there.”

“Hmm,” Declan supposed that was true. “Can you tell me where it is?” he followed up. They stared at each other a couple more moments. Declan reconsidered the question and pulled out his phone. “Ronan goes there often?” he asked. She nodded. He signed into their family’s primary account and pulled up Ronan’s location data. Ignoring Ronan’s jump down the rabbit hole, one location outside the immediate surrounding of the Barns turned up again and again. He nodded, noted the coordinates, and closed it. The logistics were sorted out. 

“Why should I take them to Lindenmere?” Declan asked carefully.

“Matthew is…” Opal paused, weighing her words. “Like it. It’s like him. It’s more like KERAAAAAH’s dreams.” The loud shriek was startling; Declan had heard it from Ronan’s raven Chainsaw but not from a human mouth. Human-ish.

“Matthew would be safe there?” Declan asked. He knew well enough not all dreams—not all of Ronan’s dreams—were safe places.

She shrugged. “Safe with me there,” she said. “He wouldn’t fall asleep. Not any more than he does now. With bad men around, there isn’t anywhere safer. It wouldn’t like them.”

His heart beat faster. Declan glanced sideways at her messy blonde hair, unwashed. “You mean,” he sought to confirm, “if… a dreamer dies, their dreams can stay awake there? Without their dreamer?” It was a horrible idea. Declan had been girding himself to see Matthew or Jordan get distracted—each time worrying whether it was they had already been doing, a sign of them being a dream, or if it was what had happened to Aurora, a sign of what had happened and what was to come. Declan couldn’t imagine a world without his brothers, a world without Ronan. Horrible as that imagined future was, saving one brother was better than losing them both.

“Yes,” she scrutinized him skeptically. Like he was foolish or slow. Well, no one had taught him about dreams. Declan only had what he had grown up with.

“Okay…” he said. “Okay.” A plan was shaping up. Declan smiled at Opal. “You’re a very good psychopomp.”

She preened.


	4. Acts of Service

The farmhouse grew bigger and bigger. The walk wasn’t that much longer. Declan halted a hundred or so feet away from it. Opal took a couple more steps before she too stopped, spinning to look at Declan. She raised her eyebrows and waited, like he might start a game without explaining the rules or perform a cultural norm she was ignorant of.

“You know the Barns well, yes?” Declan asked. An easy question.

She nodded.

It was a large property, too large for one man or psychopomp to patrol. The longer they had walked the more clear it had become Opal was doing her own kind of patrol. Sure she had picked up a stick to chew on and nearly skipped on her shorter legs to keep up with Declan, but she’d scanned a hundred and eighty degrees around them always and checked behind them regularly. Her head tilted like she was listening for sounds unnatural to the Barns. Her intentions were telegraphed for all the world to see. Most of the world never saw her, so she didn’t need Declan’s more subtle means. Possibly, she had never learned how. Opal distinguished between friend and foe and qualified as a second pair of eyes. “Can you keep an eye out for the bad people?” Declan asked. “They’re normal people, not dreamers or… dreams.”

Opal continued staring at him. “Just rule following animalness?” she confirmed.

Declan paused, not at the term but her questioning of who was bad. “If all goes well, Ronan should show up with one or two dreamers,” he replied. “Hennessy looks like Jordan.” Declan paused, considered what fit both of them. “Black, big kinky hair, floral tattoos around her neck and fingers,” he said, “Eleven roses around the neck. All tight angles and sharp edges. As desperate as a cornered animal 24/7 and the most exhausted person you could ever meet. It’s not just in her eyes but her bones. Can’t dream your way out of needing a good night’s sleep. Can’t sleep your way out of dreaming.” Studying Niall and Ronan had taught him some things. 

“And Bryde,” Declan’s expression flattened further, empty as a model’s face. “I don’t know what he looks like, but he’s dangerous, interested in Ronan, and nominally on our side at the moment. He’s been talking to Ronan where no one else can hear. Grooming him. Ronan could walk right in with him like everything’s hunky dory, and it’s not. Or if he’s only with Bryde or shows up with other people altogether…” Declan sighed and pressed a couple fingers against his temple. “If Ronan shows up with anyone, or if anyone shows up without him, Hennessy or Bryde or anyone else. Even Adam Parrish. He’s gone silent, so who knows —”    
  
If Declan were to judge Ronan’s anxious relationship with his phone in the diner, he would say something was up with Parrish. Ronan hadn’t said what, but it was hard to be too paranoid when an international black ops government funded group was trying to kill his whole family. Parrish was a psychic, isolated and vulnerable. Bad things could happen to psychics. Something dangerous or ill intentioned could take the driver’s seat and Declan, not being anything, couldn’t inherently tell the difference. He preferred to take precautions. Better than getting killed and having Parrish apologetic after the fact. “No matter who it is, I’d like to know who’s coming here before they’re here. Just in case.” She nodded, either in understanding or approval.    
  
“I can watch out for people,” Opal said.

“Don’t let them see you, if you can,” Declan said. “I don’t want them to hurt you. Just get away and get back to me as soon as possible. Okay?” He reached across and brushed back a piece of hair that had slipped out from under her cap.

“That’s not hard,” Opal said. She peered at him so intently that Declan delayed parting ways. He didn’t know if there was anything else. After a good thirty seconds, he nodded and made his way down the hill toward the house.

A quick glance over his shoulder showed her moving away, toward the driveway and the front entrance. He would ask her more later—if they had a later—about Lindenmere, about however much she knew. It was the smart decision. Nothing personal.

Inside, Matthew’s voice was a quiet tone, so much quieter than he usually did anything, and Jordan’s reply in a murmur. It might have been soothing, except for the reminder of Matthew’s existential crisis. He ducked his head into the room, offering a reassuring smile. “I’m back,” he declared. “Is anyone hungry?”

They stopped talking. Jordan shrugged. With everything  that had happened in the last twenty-four hours , Declan supposed hunger wasn’t one of her top concerns. Matthew nodded after a moment.

“I’ll see what I can cook up,” Declan said. He turned and headed toward the kitchen. Their soft conversation picked up, and he tried to hear what they were saying. “I do poop,” Matthew declared. “And pee. That has to happen somehow.”

Even as a small child, Ronan had known that much, Declan agreed. He wasn’t sure how strong a marker it was for an intestinal tract, kidneys, or even a stomach.

The kitchen was practically bare. Either Ronan was grocery shopping once a week, as scheduled, and that had been interrupted by emergencies, or Ronan wasn’t shopping. Or he was behind on dreaming his groceries. Whatever the case, Declan found eggs and bacon and ignored the instant dinners. He took off his jacket and replaced it with Aurora’s apron. It was quick work, so far as food went, and Declan’s mind hummed as he worked. He nursed the idea in his head and considered how best to implement it. The idea itself was simple, and Declan could work out the logistics of providing them with food and supplies, if they still had human needs and functions in a dream forest. The thorny part was raising it with Matthew and Jordan in such a way that they would agree. Sure, Declan could keep his mouth shut, only raising Lindenmere as an option when they were attacked or taking them to it unilaterally if they fell magically asleep. That was the easier option: the secret and the lie. His modus operandi.

The meeting held in the diner had been an all cards on the table affair; it hadn’t dared address this issue. The dreamers’ deaths had been neatly avoided, talked around, lied about with unearned optimism. All the information they had was shared, but the worst case outcome had no plan. By the time they needed one, there wouldn’t be time to come up with one, and that could kill them. Declan wasn’t enough on his own. They would have all been dead, all three of them, without Ronan’s terrible bloodthirsty dark inferno coming to their aid. If lying kept Matthew and Jordan safer, it was the easier and more reliable option by far. The trouble was that Declan doubted it would  work . Unconscious people were unwieldy, difficult to move, and made covering their retreat impossible.

Setting the table, Declan considered the approach. The truth had fewer options. His throat felt raw. His acid reflux was at its worst. He dry swallowed an antacid,  hung up the apron , and crossed the hall. Jordan and Matthew were mirror images, each with a hand to their throat and the other on their stomachs. A soft insubstantial smile lifted Matthew’s face.

“Food’s ready,” Declan said. Matthew’s hands dropped guiltily, and he nodded. A quiet gurgle came from his stomach, and Matthew’s eyes met Jordan’s. They stood, and Jordan’s cheer slipped away behind Matthew’s back. Declan didn’t force a smile for her, instead he just met her eyes. He remembered the sight of dead girls who looked just like Jordan. Just like Hennessy. They’d had internal organs.

With strict discipline, Declan forced himself to eat. Jordan pushed the food around her plate sluggishly but accepted a bottle of hot sauce from Declan. Red drowned the eggs and bacon; murder on a plate. Matthew’s regular scraping sounds encouraged Declan to play along. He needed food. No one talked while they ate, a silent ritual resembling the immediate days after Niall Lynch’s death. Aurora had stopped singing. Ronan and Matthew walked around in a daze. Declan, his gut clenched, had watched and waited for their mother to fall asleep. He couldn’t do that again.

“Would you like to hear a story?” Declan asked Matthew. He said it in the tone their father always took, the cadence matching it. Declan could have been a mockingbird.

Matthew straightened, turned toward him, and blinked. He focused on Declan’s face, slumping slightly. “It’s safe then,” he whispered under his breath, so softly Declan leaned in. Awe gave way to Matthew’s natural exuberance. “Yes!” he triumphantly declared. Declan’s ears rang. By the time he recovered, Matthew had left. He thumped noisily up the stairs toward his room.

“Is that…normal?” Jordan asked, staring after him.

Declan shared a sad smile, “Yeah. Our dad always told us stories in Matthew’s room.” He piled the plates in the sink and motioned Jordan to follow.


	5. A Rather Transparent Story

Declan ignored the other rooms, taking Jordan directly to Matthew’s room. His brother sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, taking up far more room than he had in Declan’s memory. He filled in the space with memories of where Ronan and he had sat with Matthew, far more boys than space. They had piled up around each other: Ronan and Matthew excited masses of limbs, Declan a quiet anchor. He had known Niall’s stories were shit, imagined or rewritten to fit his narrative of dreamers. They were all about Ronan and Niall, with no space for his other sons, but he missed Ronan’s elbow in his side and Matthew’s wiggling that stilled as the story began. It had happened so many times, the memory had etched itself in the room, a physical presence.

Declan blinked and focused on the present. Matthew was alone at the head of the bed, Jordan on the shabby desk chair next to it. It squeaked and thudded as she turned it to face him. The chair fit his memory precisely. His heart stuttered, but he sat at the foot of the bed.

“He’s really good at telling stories,” Matthew whispered loudly to Jordan. He turned to her expectantly. Jordan only gave him a small nod. “Has he told you stories? You’re in for a treat—”

“Are you going to be quiet?” Declan asked. His voice was exactly like Niall’s. It sealed the ritual, and Matthew stilled. His eyes returned to Declan, intensely attentive. Declan swore Matthew had grown chatty on purpose, so that it started properly.

“Long ago, back when Ireland was more magic than man, there was a hero. He was a god-hero, as much myth as man to those of us from the towns and cities who were more used to cobbled streets and town squares than forests and magic. He was as strong as a mountain, as fierce as a thunderstorm, and his heart was as light as sunlight beaming through virgin forests. He fended off nightmares and dark magic, defeated dark men and trapped demons, protected the trees and streams, and the hills and crags. He slept beneath the stars and befriended the creatures of the forest,” Declan felt the description rolling out, bits and pieces stolen from tales Niall had shared, others borrowed from people Declan had met all over the world. He didn’t copy those voices perfectly. That would have been disjointed. Instead he braided them together into a melodic rise and fall, most closely imitating their father. 

“Despite the company of animals and trees, despite the awe and gratitude of the men and women of the isle, the god-hero was lonely. He was a story told around the hearth, words of prayer invoked as protection, and a hero beloved but apart. In gratitude for all he did, to ease his lonely heart, magic made a brother for him. His brother was blessed, golden and sweet. So kind was the brother that everyone loved him. The townsfolk hosted him as a guest when the hero had to face a dragon or monster. Blood and violence never marred his life.” Matthew leaned forward. Rather than make Declan uncomfortable, it eased him into the story. He sheltered in the pleasure of crafting the words together. It wasn’t about the zing of excitement which ran through him. That came from the stakes—life and death, _their_ lives and _their_ deaths. The small, personal joy burst, a bubble snagged on a rough edge. Declan paused, let it grow with their expectation and shut out his personal angst. It didn’t help. “Only he had one weakness,” Declan continued, “his life was bound with the god-hero’s. It was not so great a weakness. The god-hero had fought giants and trolls, dark champions and evil sorcerers. He had always come back. Laughter and joy filled the air, the sunlight golden whenever the brothers were reunited. The island was safer for the god-hero’s protection and happier for his brother’s company.

“The age stretched on, and Ireland was a safe and magical refuge. Even as monsters and dark men crushed the spirit of magic out of other lands, the hero repelled them from their shores. Tall the hero stood, and long was his stride. He walked the island by day and kept watch on the grey sea. The dark men could not come without being seen, so he turned them aside time and again. At least… until all the neighboring lands had fallen to smoke and shadow. Magic withdrew from most of the world, and the island gleamed bright with it,” Declan paused. They could imagine the darkness, not as ruined cities and smoky countryside but a mansion full of corpses, an overturned town house, an arm separated and abandoned. It was potent imagery to draw from. Declan barely had to say a word.

“Hungry eyes turned toward the island, never satiated,” Declan continued. Jordan’s brows furrowed, and she leaned back, casual-like, though Declan saw her eyes flick toward him when he paused. “The dark men came, not one by one but ten by ten and boat by boat. The god-hero fought them in the surf. He fought them on the beach, on the dune, on lea and in forest, on mountains and in valleys. He was mighty, and his sword cut down evil as a scythe cuts grass. They came for the villages and the wild places. No matter how many the god-hero slew, more came and their numbers swelled—a plague upon Ireland’s shores. Any one of them, any ten, the god-hero could beat and did. He fought day and night without cease, without sleep, without food or rest or water. The dark men multiplied and swarmed, crushing the earth beneath their feet, staining it black with their blood. Even their deaths poisoned the land and weakened the god-hero. Their blows began to land, and his blood darkened the soil as well, step by step he was pushed further back into the island. There was no rest and no healing, only relentless battle until he bled his last for the people and land he held dear. With his death, magic shrunk back upon itself, hidden among the safe places that only the island people knew.”

Matthew had tears in his eyes and wiped them away on the back of his hand. Jordan’s face was hard and distant, perhaps imagining other bodies that had bled their last. “In the village, hearts broke even further for the golden brother had fallen the moment the god-hero died. It was not death, as the people had first believed, as the days grew dark, but a ceaseless sleep. The loss of one brother was heart wrenching, losing both was untenable,” Declan’s heart beat faster, and he forced his voice to speak as slow and as steady as it had the rest of the story. This could not be rushed. “They begged magic for aid, not for themselves, not for a god-hero to rescue them from the dark men among them, not for freedom from the dark times they faced, but for something smaller, something that would feed their souls and water their hearts, for a gesture of hope, for salvation of the gentlest among them and the kindest. Furtively, whispering so only they could hear it, magic answered. It could save him. It could sustain him. Only, it was no longer on the beaches and in their villages. Magic was deep within the island, pooled among its hidden places, safe from the dark men overrunning their lands. If they could bring the brother there, without alerting the dark men, it could wake him.”

Declan provided the smallest of pauses. Matthew was holding his breath, almost as still as if he were in a trance. Declan’s heart stumbled but continued. It was only the story that had him transfixed, Declan told himself. There was a chance it wasn’t a lie. “Together they carried his sleeping form, walking only at night when they could not be seen, on paths they had known all their lives. They took him to a gentle glen, beside a cold still pond, deep in the heart of a forest. To their gasps of joy, he awoke. The pool provided water. The forest provided plants and nuts. The people brought bread and salt, and to this day, he lifts their hearts and lives.”

The soft cadence of his voice had blanketed the room. It remained in the still quiet. Matthew’s eyes glazed, his face glossy and lost in story. He exhaled softly. Declan waited for their responses, to judge their moods, and to mention the name Opal had given him—Lindenmere.

Matthew blinked and shivered. He shook himself back, and Declan released the tension in his belly. It had only been a story, not one of his episodes. Not the final episode. Matthew frowned and shook his head. The room darkened, a cloud blocking the sun’s light from reaching the window. Matthew jerkily slid off the bed, catching himself and stopping next to Declan. “That’s not a story. You can’t just shove me in a forest like Mom,” he whispered, as sharp as a knife. His loud steps echoed down the hall, aggressively stomping down the stairs, but Declan didn’t hear a door opening or closing, so at least Matthew remained safely in the house.

Jordan glowered. She turned back from Matthew’s to Declan. “That’s what that was about?” she said. “You may have given up on them,” Jordan glanced down, pulled herself together, and stared with brittle determination, “But I haven’t.” It rang hollow. Grief was tight in her throat. She stood, the violence of it making the chair wobble, and walked past Declan, pausing in the doorway. “Perhaps you’re ready to live without them…” Jordan didn’t finish the sentence. Her steps led further down the hall. A door opened and slammed shut.

Declan sat alone at the end of the bed and dropped his face to his hands. He hadn’t lied, but he had—and he would—still end up alone.


	6. We All Die Alone

Everything Matthew still wore or used had been stripped from his room and relocated to Alexandria. It was strewn around the townhouse, dirty, bloody, and torn. What remained in his room at the Barns were a few toys and knick knacks he had outgrown, a lamp that didn’t plug into an outlet, and a surplus supply of socks stocked the dresser. Still, it was clean. The surfaces weren’t covered in dust, despite more than a year in disuse. Declan hummed, pleased that Ronan only permitted his room to become a pigsty.

The room was empty but not as empty as Declan’s room, which had never held so much character. Like Matthew’s behavior since he learned the truth, it felt quiet, moody, and empty. It fit Declan’s mood. Neither Matthew nor Jordan had been willing to talk about the possibility of outliving Ronan or Hennessy. It was a conversation they could wait out. In the worst case scenario, the one where the conversation mattered, they would fade and grow still, dying if they were not cared for. Declan would still be there, responsible for them both. He had no way out.

The world had shrunk around Niall until all his business was with Greenmantle, Laumonier, or Seondeok. Of the three, Declan preferred Seondeok. She was all business, nothing extraneous. There hadn’t been trust between them; just manners. Declan had kept that relationship steady, but Niall’s stories and promises still caught up with him. The web of lies only spun so far. His death had not surprised Declan as much as it had his brothers. The tragedy had been a long time coming.

Ronan had no part in that world. He was disconnected—save for that stupid move providing his zip code—and free. These people hunting Ronan, Hennessy, all of them weren’t like the black market dealers. They didn’t want something from Ronan. They wanted him dead. They wanted everything to do with dreamers dead and destroyed. Even if they didn’t kill Matthew or Jordan directly, they would be as comatose as Aurora in a matter of days.

As Aurora… Declan frowned. Matthew’s words echoed in his head. Only the last two words made no sense. Like Mom. Like Mom. Like Mom.

The last Declan had seen Aurora Lynch, she sat in a rocking chair in the parlor, an IV connected to her arm, more a statue than a person. A year ago, when they returned to the Barns on Ronan’s birthday, Aurora hadn’t been there. Declan had been too busy trying to keep his brothers alive. He hadn’t asked after her. She had already been dead to him for more than a year, in all but name.

As complicated as his feelings toward Aurora were—like Niall, she had never treated Declan the way she had Matthew or Ronan; he had been an accomplice and a lead balloon—his spirits raised. Perhaps she was alive. Perhaps she knew about dreaming, about dreamers, about any of this—Declan slowed down. He stood and paced the length of the room a few times. Answers, he needed answers. Matthew was not about to talk with him, and even if Declan could reach Ronan by phone, Declan didn’t want to distract him. Someone else had to—

Declan slid quietly across the floor. It was not true silence, the kind that attracts attention for its absence, instead it was soft footsteps, audible and forgettable. He went down the stairs, paused in the entryway, and walked out the front door.

Just as no one had been visible in the house, no one was on the porch or in front of the house. There wasn’t much to it. Declan’s volvo sat nose out just to the left of the porch steps. Concrete blocks formed a rectangle off to the other side. It was still, undisturbed, since he had last seen it.

Declan began down the drive. There were enough twists and turns the house wasn’t visible the entire way. That was a feature he was grateful for, but the protection was double-sided—the same features also meant not seeing someone coming—so he wasn’t too grateful. Since his loafers were wet from walking through the grass, they collected dirt and dust from the gravel drive. They were good shoes, but if they didn’t survive, Declan could buy another pair. His pace slowed as he drew near whatever his brother had dreamt to protect the place. He heeded the trees bordering the drive, looking for the girl—being, psychopomp—he had met earlier. She blended in well, if she was even there.

A blur of movement to one side caught his attention. One arm came up, the other reached for the gun, but the furry legged girl came out of the woods. “No one else is here,” she said. That being said, she resumed biting on a stick.

“I came to talk with you,” Declan said, his hand dropping from his holster. He joined her side of the road and motioned her to continue back out of view. She walked nearly parallel to him, heedless of the twigs and leaves sticking to her oversized sweater. Out of the way, he paused, considering how to word his question and what answer he wanted. What it would mean.

His hands slid into his pockets, and Declan regarded Opal seriously. “Have you met my mother, Aurora Lynch?” he asked. A simple question without as much of an emotional punch.

Opal looked at him for a longer time than Declan was used to people staring. She nodded.

“Did Ronan,” Declan held his tone even, “take her to the forest? Is that how you know that would work?” His head motioned back toward the house, toward Matthew and Jordan.

“Yes, no,” Opal said.

His mouth flattened further. Declan considered what he wanted more information on. Did it really matter how Opal knew it would work? Would it work if there were no more dreamers for the forest? If Ronan…

“Could I see her—talk to her—if I went there? To the forest? To Lindenmere?” Declan asked.

Her head shook immediately. “No,” Opal said. Her arms reached for his shirt, pulling on it, pulling so that she wrapped around him, small though she was. Her head leaned back, and Declan met her gaze, stiff and still. “I couldn’t save her. She got unmade.”

He swayed, eyes staring up into the tree branches to deny his tears. Her arms squeezed tight around him, and all Declan could see was Matthew in his townhouse, black substance coming out his ears, his eyes, his mouth. He imagined Aurora, soft gentle Aurora collapsing, liquefying… It hurt worse than it should have. He hadn’t loved her straightforwardly. His heart had already been torn apart watching her fade away until she collapsed in front of him. She had been absent from his life for over two years. The logic didn’t work—she would never say anything to him again. He wasn’t dauntless. He was scared. And alone.

Slowly, Declan returned to himself. The crisp autumn air cooled the tracks on his cheeks and bit in his lungs. He wiped his face. His hand came off wet, but the skin around his eyes hadn’t felt tender. No one—he glanced down—else had to know what had happened. “It’s not your fault,” Declan assured Opal. He silently repeated it half-heartedly to himself. The world was full of things that killed Lynches.

She still squeezed him tight, in something like a hug. Opal reminded him terribly of Matthew.


	7. Matthew Rocks The House

Declan heard the house before he saw it. The woods vibrated from the percussive power, not the power of a bomb exploding outwards but the rhythmic beat of music that had been slaughtered and reanimated through synthetic instruments. That the farmhouse possessed such powerful speakers was news to Declan but not shocking. He imagined the throbbing cracks and bangs of Ronan’s music. Between synth pop and electronica, Ronan’s tastes were marginally more bearable than Matthew’s. Certainly, when one kind overwhelmed all other sound, even his steps on the gravel, it created a sense of longing for the other.

When he reached the front door, Declan couldn’t hear his own thoughts. He pushed through the invisible waves of sound, the volume overwhelming the door’s usual reassuring creak.  Declan performed another check of the house. The music played from the living room, but Matthew wasn’t there. Declan’s pulse quickened. He took the stairs in quick  clipped steps. One hand held the gun, aimed low at the floor before his feet. The other pushed each door open as he passed. Empty undisturbed rooms. Standing at the end of the hall, in the last doorway, he turned around, staring and thinking.

After a moment, Declan returned to the doorway to his bedroom and examined the room more carefully. The curtain fluttered in the window, moving in the wind. One down. He returned the gun to the holster at his side and approached the sill. It had been years since Declan had climbed onto the roof, but it had always been doable from his bedroom window. It left no hands free, but he pulled himself out the window and up over the edge onto the slanted roof.

Matthew sat high atop it, back to the chimney. The brick structure released notes of music instead of smoke, and his younger brother stared out at the Barns around them. Matthew didn’t stir as Declan’s stomach banged against the edge of the roof and he huffed and coughed. Once he was fully on the roof and made his way up, Declan was a giant against the distant herds of cattle. Still, Matthew sat still as a statue. Declan’s heart stammered, and his stomach was nauseated. Was Matthew in another of his… episodes? That this one, perhaps, was permanent. How would Declan get him safely down from the roof? The other questions were too painful to think aloud.

Declan sat next to his brother, his back also pressed against the cool brick. He leaned his head back and waited, rather than poking and prodding, rather than immediately checking what Matthew’s stillness meant. Matthew still breathed. His chest rose and fell, the air almost visible from his exhalations. It was uneven, a little ragged. That… sign of hurt and pain soothed Declan. Matthew was still there, still present.

Declan had nothing to break Matthew out of his mood. Indeed, they had nothing to do, nothing but time, and nowhere to go, unless and until something happened. Declan rested his hand between them on the roof, palm up in invitation. Matthew wrapped his arms around his knees, his head leaning down on them, a quiet rejection. Declan didn’t know what to say…what he could say. So he simply waited, miserable and hollow. The world wasn’t anything like the upbeat tempo of the music billowing up the chimney.

“You think Ronan’s going to die,” Matthew whispered quietly. His voice was barely audible, but fear tinged the words, and Declan cringed. He wanted to deny it.

“That depends on what Bryde is like and what he wants,” Declan said. Not quite a lie. “I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t trust anyone,” Matthew pointed out. He lifted his head and turned sidelong over at Declan. Expecting what?

He nodded. “Bryde scares a lot of scary people,” Declan said. He sighed. “He is powerful, and when he’s on our side, that’s useful, but we already have a target painted on our backs.” He paused. “I don’t believe we should simply permit him to hold our lives in his hands. I want to be ready for whatever happens. So long as Ronan is out there, any time I cannot reach or help him, all I can do is try to keep you safe.” One brother safe and sound was infinitely better than none. He spoke softly, trying not to scare Matthew further, but without lying.

Matthew rested his chin on his arms and looked out across the Barns. He gulped in large breaths of air, held them, then slowly slumped again as he exhaled. After four or five breaths like that, he managed, “What about keeping you safe?”

Declan froze, his face calm and bland, relaxed. His mind whirred. Why would Matthew be concerned with that? Declan was the oldest brother. Keeping them safe was his responsibility. His safety had been thrown out the window years ago, when Niall first took him to the Fairy Market in Tokyo. Matthew, sweet innocent Matthew, didn’t know that, and Declan didn’t have the heart to disclose he didn’t know what safety felt like. “The best way to do that is to keep yourself safe,” Declan said. “If you’re safe,” he paused, keeping silent the similar if impossible phrase ‘if Ronan is safe’, “then I’ll make sure to be safe.” The thrill of chasing Niall’s breadcrumbs toward his birth mother, the jolt of adrenaline while calling Boudicca, and the seductive pull when he went to meet the New Fenian—Declan was too much of his father’s son. He only held that siren’s call at bay for their sakes. The risk it was to them and their lives.

Matthew’s profile was golden, ready for a painting: a brooding youth in autumn, touched by mortality. Cattle tracked up and down some of the rolling hills, munching on the lush grasses. The house was empty, but the grasses and animals, the multitudes of unique structures, the hidden kingdom at the Barns was much the same as it always had. Undisturbed. A hidden kingdom protected not by borders but secrecy. The world didn’t know it was there. When it did? Declan tried not to imagine how it would change. There had been skirmishes—he spotted the barn where he had once been held, handcuffed, as strangers tossed it, searching for something they wouldn’t name—but not full invasion. In the other direction, Declan could see the drive. The blood was gone, but it haunted the place. Niall’s dead body left at their doorstep. The message—that could happen to the rest of you—loud and clear.

Finally, Matthew sighed, deflated. “If it will keep you safe,” he said. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Declan echoed.

“I’ll go to the forest if you promise to stay safe,” Matthew said, inhaling sharply at the end.

“I’ll do everything I can,” Declan said. He couldn’t promise more.

Matthew turned his head, resting his cheek on his knee. Tears threatened his eyes, but he dropped his arms and lunged at Declan, wrapping his arms around in a hug. Declan was stiff for a moment then he wrapped his arms around Matthew and patted his back gently. The hug stretched on longer than Declan felt comfortable, but this was Matthew, and the discomfort was a small price to reassure his brother, especially since Matthew had agreed to the backup plan. 

The hug ended eventually. They sat next to each other, and the weight on Declan’s heart was not light but lighter. His arm was still wrapped around Matthew, hooking him by the shoulders. It held him close and secured Matthew safely to the roof. Declan had a decent view of the Barns. It was almost comfortable.

Matthew stole glances at Declan, short furtive looks that could have gone unnoticed if they had occupied a library together or a school dance or the sideline of a soccer game. At least, if he had been at someone else. Declan always noticed when people watched him. He assessed the rolling hills, noticing animals and barn repairs. Plenty of buildings still needed work. One dilapidated structure appeared more in the process of falling down than being fixed up. The door wouldn’t shut, letting in more of the elements. Declan’s mouth flattened farther. Had it been like that the last time he had visited the Barns?

A cough came from beside him, shaking Declan’s arm and drawing his attention back to his brother. He glanced over and met Matthew’s face. He had the expression of a cartoon squirrel figuring out how to reach the spinning bird feeder. Declan squeezed Matthew’s shoulder lightly and waited patiently. He wasn’t used to the quieter, more serious behavior of the last few days, but Declan appreciated that it was far easier to handle than Ronan’s pigheaded moping.

“Last night, at the townhouse, we were in the attic,” Matthew started. He stopped, not satisfied with that beginning. “I’d never been in the attic before last night,” he tried again. “Even before you moved there. Even before Dad died.” Matthew’s face twisted with intense focus. There was a tinge of sadness but more confusion. Question marks could have floated above his head to no added effect. He shook his head and set something aside, focused as best he could on the point he was reaching. “I know you redecorated the townhouse and took stuff out or away or did something with most of Dad’s things there. Were those his things in the attic or yours? They felt… they felt like things here do.” He stopped and looked at Declan expectantly.

Another puzzle to Matthew’s mind, one he couldn’t solve. “Those paintings, the lamp—Dad didn’t make them. Nor did Ronan,” Declan said. “They’re art, and… they’re mine.” And they generated those feelings without any dreamt ingredients. They were evocative—raw emotion isolated from the stimulus.

Matthew nodded briefly  in acknowledgement . His brows pressed together, his gaze unfocused. His mouth opened and closed a couple times, resembling a fish. “Why are they in the attic?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you have something like that in your room. It’s always…” he spun one hand in a circle, grasping at words, “Irish landscapes and black and white photographs and”—a long pause—“National Geographic kind of stuff.” The distinctions had been sharpest when they had shared a room in the Aglionby dorms, Matthew’s mess expanding into Declan’s spaces. A hurricane of color.

Declan could have answered in so many ways. They were more valuable than what he decorated the townhouse with, and as that attack had shown, they were safer in the attic. Such emotional work wasn’t meant to be seen at two am when one woke up and went to the bathroom. The paintings still needed to be properly framed. It was a temporary storage measure. All lies.  A lie made real —it was one reason he’d never gotten around to that chore.

He set those answers aside. His throat burned from stomach acid. Jordan had already seen the attic, in a moment of caution thrown to the wind, but Matthew had only been there because they had been stuck, black oozing canine shapes piling atop each other each time Declan checked if they could leave. “They were… private,” Declan said. “A space just for me.” Until the last twenty-four hours.

Matthew’s mouth twitched, and he turned away. “Oh,” he said. His gaze stared out toward the landscape again. “I can… we don’t have to… It can be private.” He was sad and squirmed like he did when Declan considered reprimanding him. As ever, Declan didn’t have the heart to do it.

“No, it’s okay,” Declan said, though he felt much the opposite. That wasn’t Matthew’s fault, and he couldn’t unsee it. He leaned over and brushed back Matthew’s curls. “What did they make you feel?” Declan asked.

“Uncomfortable,” Matthew mumbled. “Lonely. Alive.” He exhaled. Took another breath in. “Too much.”

Declan smiled at his grimy dress shoes pressed against the roof, dirty smudges tracking the path he had made up toward the chimney. “Me too,” he said. “Me too.” He squeezed Matthew’s shoulder.


	8. Gu(il)t Check

While searching for Matthew, Declan had checked every room in the house and had not seen Jordan. It was a large enough house, and she had been upset, so possibly he had missed her. Maybe she had also moved around, her steps masked by dubstep remixed pop music at an unholy volume. Declan doubted that safer, more desirable explanation. His life hadn’t been that neat and tidy in a long time, if ever. His eyes scanned the view of the Barns, lingering on animals and oddities, shapes that indicated some presence. None of them were Jordan, and the peace Declan felt sitting with Matthew evaporated with the growing uncertainty.

“I need to go and check on things,” Declan told Matthew, brushing his brother’s hair back where it kept falling down. “You can keep sitting up here. Please be ready to leave quickly if we need to hustle.”

Matthew didn’t argue. “I wish the Barns was safe,” he said softly. Declan followed Matthew’s gaze to the front drive. Ronan’s BMW was absent, as was Parrish’s beater. Only Declan’s reliable Volvo sat in front of the house. Declan could trace the spot where Niall’s body had been, the pool of blood that circled his head in a mockery of religious iconography. The Barns had stopped being a safe place for Matthew years ago. For Declan, years before that.

“Me too,” Declan said. Matthew turned back to him and wrapped him in a hug. Declan’s stiffness relaxed after a few moments, and he rubbed Matthew’s shoulder. Declan waited until Matthew finished the hug before pulling away and carefully making his way back down the roof to the window for his bedroom.

Inside the house, music overwhelmed all other sounds. In a beat that vibrated his bones, the lyrics declared that “in this city, I won’t disappear, in this city, I got nothing to fear.” Declan ground his teeth. He checked the second story quickly followed by the first while the house shook with the idea that some stay some go. Jordan hadn’t stayed. Declan’s heart beat faster, hoping that she was still at the Barns. She had to be at the Barns. Pissed as she was at him, Jordan wouldn’t abandon Hennessy. He couldn’t leave Matthew behind to chase her down anywhere else. For a moment, the bloody remains from the day before overlaid the peaceful scene. Well, he could check out the property. That was basically another security sweep. Two birds, one stone, as the saying was. Declan went out the back door and considered the barns sprouting from the landscape. There were nearly infinite places to brood privately on the Barns.

His search was methodical. The November air over the Barns was chilly, and Jordan hadn’t worn enough to stay warm outside indefinitely. Declan slid, pulled, and raised barn doors as required. Bits of dreams, gathered grain, and farming implements told him Ronan regularly came out to these barns. One garbage can shook in such a way that Declan didn’t open it but set a heavy stone he found atop it instead. Another held a cow that Declan eyed uneasily. Had it floated in the sky, asleep, the kind of balloon Ronan dreamed of? Being asleep, it didn’t answer.

These barns were undisturbed since Ronan had last made his way through. So Declan headed deeper into the property, toward the barns that hadn’t received as much of Ronan’s attention and repairs. Some were the same as they had before Niall died, except with more dust or mildew. They felt like a graveyard, somewhere quiet and solemn. Dim sunlight filtered through loose spots between boards, a broken seam of metal siding, windows which had some time ago contained glass or soap bubbles.

He approached a broken structure, so long in need of repairs that ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ were not entirely distinguishable. Nature had begun reclaiming it, and without manmade defense, it was a one-sided battle. The barn resembled a cemetery—his presence an unwanted intrusion upon the dead’s rest. Declan stepped quietly into the dark space. In the hushed silence, his breath stood out. Layered beneath it, his soft steps crunched on the grassy floor. Light came through a doorway to one side and attracted his attention, his steps, his focus. The color wasn’t fluorescent lighting, harsh and artificial. The barns were built any which way, and dreamt light could look like anything; it could bring the sun indoors.

However this light was nothing so fantastical. Skylights in the roof let natural sunlight into the next room, and some of it spilled through the doorway. The well lit room could have been an operating theater or a stage. It was neither of those things. Declan blinked when the easel, a blank canvas sitting on it, came into view and past it against the back wall an open wardrobe revealing more canvases and a large chest just opened, the contents of both dust free… and Jordan, standing in the middle of it all. She belonged in this setting—in this place that so clearly ached with being the Barns—while Declan did not belong on the Barns at all. He never belonged. Declan swallowed and stood in the doorway, waiting for her reaction.

Jordan didn’t turn around immediately, continuing to stare at the canvas, but she inclined her head slightly. “They’re not—” she began, stopped. A small breeze blew through the cracks in the boards. Her words marched as a solemn declaration. “Hennessy’s not dead.”

Declan nodded, blinked, and said softly, “No, she’s not.” Jordan was more put together, more alive, than Aurora had been shortly after Niall’s death. Even before she fell asleep. He could see that Hennessy was alive or, at least, still breathing. Hennessy existed, stretching from moment to moment. She had to. She was a prerequisite for Jordan’s undeniably real presence.

Neither spoke for a few minutes. Jordan faced the canvas, but she hadn’t fetched any paints. Declan monitored her, the uneven rhythm of her breathing, the tension holding her upright. He was remembering the dead girls and suspected Jordan was as well. They made it easy to imagine Hennessy or Jordan dead. Once life had been stolen from them, they had become identical. Declan could imagine Hennessy shot through with bullets, Jordan’s head bashed against a wall. He knew what those deaths looked like. So did she.

“I wanted the space to be me, just me,” Jordan said softly. Her voice broke on the last words.

“You didn’t get them killed,” Declan said. The tension in her body was unmoved. Sometimes death was so long imagined and had so long felt inevitable that when it happened, you felt guilty. He felt like he could have stopped Niall being Niall or dangerous people he pissed off from killing him. Neither he nor Jordan had known about this group. Jordan’s dreams of freedom didn’t mean she had subconsciously wished for anything or dreamt it into existence. “You didn’t lead anyone to them. Those people were there before we were.”

He exhaled and reconsidered the last twenty-four hours. “I don’t know how they,” Declan paused, glancing at Jordan. He frowned slightly then smoothed it out. He continued, “how any of you got my address.” Declan had a P.O. box. He took precautions and constantly looked over his shoulder. His tax return? Perhaps the black ops group could access that. He wouldn’t expect Jordan and the rest to access that information. Hennessy certainly hadn’t been filing taxes. It had been something beyond their control. It had to have been.

“We agreed not to ask questions,” Jordan said softly. So much had happened in the short time since that date that those words felt like a childhood promise, sworn by pinkies.

“I’m only saying, it wasn’t us,” Declan said. It wasn’t quite a lie, though he wasn’t sure of himself. He wasn’t sure if he had brought this down on his family, on his brothers, or whether the world was so fractured he never could have held the pieces together. “It wasn’t you.”

“I was going to paint the Sargent,” she sighed, “When I try to start, I can’t even pick up a brush,” Jordan said. That explained the empty canvas.

“What about,” Declan replied, “a Jordan original?” He had almost said Hennessy, like both names belonged to her. They didn’t. The names had split and separated themselves into two people. Hennessy was deep bags under her eyes, listless energy, razor sharp edges, someone barely holding onto life. Jordan was electric, full of every emotion art could convey, and more alive than any painting. More alive than him. He ignored the irony.

She turned away from the canvas. “Who was this place for? Who used it?”

He let her deflect. “I don’t know. My father sold paintings, but I never saw him paint.” He dreamed them. “Perhaps Aurora,” he said. He didn’t know. Declan didn’t see any finished art. “Perhaps no one.” Perhaps, he wanted to imagine, it was meant for her.

Her finger traced along the canvas. Whatever Jordan imagined, she stopped, pressing her hand against it. She leaned forward, looking down and away. Declan waited in the doorway, neither pushing his way in nor abandoning her. Quietly, he glanced at his phone. No new notifications. He scrolled down his contact list and considered names. Each one Declan mentally crossed off. He wasn’t that desperate yet.

“When I look in the mirror, I see them,” Jordan said. “Trinity. Brooklyn. Madox.” Her voice tightened. “June.”

June had given her life along with her warning—to save them. To give them a chance. Declan remembered the bodies he had seen in the house, though he didn’t know which one belonged to Trinity or Brooklyn or Madox. He could also imagine June’s, shot in the gut at no range, a twenty minute death if the black ops team didn’t bother to finish her off faster. It had worked. The three of them were here at the Barns. Declan would light a candle for June the next time he could attend a service.

He suspected Jordan also remembered them. Not as living girls, sisters or something like it, but corpses… corpses which could have been hers. No words would make the fact that Jordan was on her own better, because they had died because Hennessy had wanted the illusion that Jordan would outlive her if something went wrong. Declan swallowed bile. Had Hennessy known about the forest and what it could do? Had she known Jordan could live without her? Had she wanted that? The questions were meaningless unless Jordan accepted it—life in a dreamt forest instead of the rest of the world.

Jordan looked small and alone. Though it felt like an intrusion, Declan slowly stepped further into the room in quiet steps as loud as their breathing. He approached her, and she let him. When he stood behind her, Declan wrapped his arms around her waist. It closed the last space between them, and Jordan leaned back. Her gaze still avoided the canvas where her fingers were splayed, like they covered an image only Jordan could see. “You’re alive,” he whispered. The others, the girls she had named, were dead, and nothing could change that. “They wanted you to live,” he added. “They’d still want you to live.”

Declan considered his next words. They huddled in his chest, and they hurt… not worse than the fear of his brothers dead—that anchored the scale—but worse than his bruises, worse than all he had worried over Jordan so far. If he let them out, Declan couldn’t lie much longer. He couldn’t say them and hold himself apart, couldn’t continue with the idea the hug said nothing about him. How had Niall done it? How did Mór Ó Corra manage it? His eyes closed, and Declan murmured a prayer, inaudibly, under his breath.  _ But deliver us from evil _ . Perhaps he was simply as bad a Catholic as his father. “I want you to live,” Declan said and opened his eyes.

Her head lifted. Jordan stared at the canvas like it was a mirror,  like they were holding eye contact . Her heart beat quicker, and his chased it. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “I want to paint you,” Jordan said thickly. Her eyes glanced around the space, turning and catching his face before he could say anything. Following the light, Jordan pointed toward an empty spot a short ways away. “Stand there.”


	9. Talk to Me like Lovers Do

The hug loosened, and Declan withdrew his arms. Jordan’s hand pressed against his chest. It hurt more than Declan expected—it must have been bruised—but the pain shattered the fear that had frozen him. He reached where she had pointed in a few paces. It was closer than the armchair had been to her, the last time Jordan painted him. Almost too close. He chose to trust her judgment. There, Declan held his face up and considered the light, turning until it reflected off the shape of his jaw, casting shadows against his neck. Jordan had scavenged supplies from the chest by the wall: some paints, brushes, a palette, a few small jars of turpentine, with varying amounts of dirt and grime in them, and a silvery bucket that sloshed with something. The rest of the barn was dry, so Declan didn’t think it was water. The bucket repeatedly drew his attention. It was the platonic ideal of a bucket—all other buckets were mere shadows on a wall in a cave—so sharp it dug itself more firmly into reality than the rest. Another dream thing.

Jordan needed time to set up her supplies. This wasn’t the date in the abandoned summer home, a studio established to her preferences. Declan was wary of how much he enjoyed observing her space out the colors around the palette, selecting a range of brushes to work with, standing before the canvas as though she could already see what she would put there. One hand slid into a pocket, thumb running over his still phone. No new text messages. She glanced over at him, her gaze catching at his neck. “Is that a shadow,” she squinted, still staring, “or a bruise?”

Lacking a mirror, Declan raised a hand and felt his neck. At the base, where his skin met his collar, the skin was tender. “Both,” Declan replied. He felt sore across his body. Bruises from the fight at his townhouse layered over bruises from the mansion’s kitchen. The lack of sleep dulled his senses which only magnified the tender sensitivity that came with any sort of pressure against the minor injuries.  _ It could have been much worse.  _ The familiar discomfort grounded him.

Her eyes moved on but stayed with Declan, considering every detail of him. His breath caught in his throat, awaiting judgment. He forced it out and back in. Passing out wouldn’t help. Silence hung over the barn again. This time quiet sounds of brushes on paint and paint on canvas filled the space. The acoustics highlighted the act of painting. “Talk,” Jordan demanded. She stopped as Declan stood a little straighter, his features loosened into nothing. A Promising Youth.

“About what?” Declan asked. His mind raced to Lindenmere, still a taboo subject with Jordan. He turned over what they knew about the multinational black ops group which had attacked them, the sum total of it coming from the murderer who had killed his father on this property. The Barns was hidden but not from everyone. Declan had been lying in the diner, painting a safer picture of the Barns than was warranted because it had been the only way forward. Ronan had given the zip code in order for him to obtain  _ The Dark Lady _ . If the murder squad didn’t track them here, Boudicca could. They weren’t safe. Declan should have been—doing what? Searching for more answers? He had avoided the dark web when conducting Niall’s business—disposable phones were safer—and he had contacted everyone he dared.

“About anything,” Jordan paused, looking at him. “The history of something. A place. A painting. A painter.” Anything removed, impersonal. She implicitly held their bargain, asking no more about himself or about the Barns than he might freely offer. Declan had difficulty naming a single painter. Conversations were easiest when planned ahead. Spontaneity was not his strong suit. He considered the National Gallery: the time he had spent there, the paintings on the walls, the mountains more work held back in the archives, the pleasant forgettable conversations he’d had with others working at the museum.

His memory snagged on a sketch, not even a painting, he had seen in the archives months before. It had been incomplete, with just enough shading to bring the portrait to life. They emphasized the soft give in the figure’s belly. The breasts fell toward the sides. The hand raised near her face and the expression demonstrated that she was thinking about something but didn’t share the details. Her neck had also been in shadow. The faded signature had been held by the elongated downward stroke of the initial, K. Declan recognized the signature.

“Forgive the beginnings. As I’m sure you know, art history is full of movements and ideas that did not last. They are soap bubbles, beautiful and shimmering, art brushed across their surfaces briefly. Artists try new ideas, explore what’s possible, and only by doing so find what they want. Each bubble bursts, and those that are not made again and again and again are easily lost and forgotten,” Declan began at point A, blindly bridging the gap toward point B. He prayed, desperately, that it was clear  _ this _ wasn’t meant to teach her something new. They were raw, turns of phrases he had collected and pronunciations he had memorized. They built momentum. “The earliest abstract art we know of came from China during the Tang dynasty, but none of Wang Mo’s paintings survive. The oldest we still have come later, in the Song dynasty. In Europe,” Declan sighed. “Abstract art didn’t begin truly until the nineteenth century.”

He paused, worrying his lip. “If you ever go to Detroit, you should see  _ Nocturne in Black and Gold—The Falling Rocket  _ by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, circa 1875,” Declan continued. “1875!” he declared again in a whisper. It was not his point, but had it been possible, through the network he had tended for his father, he would have purchased it. There was no magic in it, other than the feelings it evoked. “Expressionism reacted to Impressionism. Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gaugin inspired many other artists at the start of the 20th century: Picasso, Matisse…” he stopped, checking Jordan’s reactions. Her eyes flicked over to him again, focused, but her lips curled up. It wasn’t new information. That wasn’t the point. It set the scene, a lazy course of words that bubbled onward, simple structure leading to rapids. Jordan let him.

“Picasso and Cubism inspired a sprawl of new directions for art, movements rising and falling as abstract art evolved, eventually spreading beyond the visual arts to music, design, and anything else people could touch,” the words tumbled out of him, one after another, the way ideas had in that day and age. “The Great War changed everything,” Declan said, using the name it had been called at the time, the idea it had been. “The war to end all wars that did not end war. It is nearly impossible to see the shape of something that changes everything as it does so. The whole world shifted, and artists with it. Some artists volunteered and fought. Many of those in France joined the Foreign Legion, František Kupka among them. At forty-three, he was at least twenty-five years older than the rest of the soldiers. He’d been married for almost a decade. His wife, Nini, marched with them the first day. Only the first day, though, because she was arrested and sent back to Paris. Women, they thought, could not handle war, not this new modern mechanical monstrosity that dwarfed what came before. They were not entirely wrong—people are not made to survive war or the waist deep freezing water that drenched the trenches. That’s what sent Kupka home: not a bullet, not a bayonet, not mortars, nor mustard gas. Miserable inhumane conditions.

“That is not to say the first world war halted abstract art in its tracks,” Declan motioned toward the walls as though they were still in his attic. “Even Kupka returned to it in the 1930s, but that brief movement, Orphism, barely formed during scant years in the time before the war, never returned. It couldn’t. Not when the artists themselves were changed. František Kupka actually destroyed much of his art near the end of his life. We lost so much of his work, and since he named his works similarly and reused titles, we may never know the depth of our loss.

“Others, he reworked, painted white over color to remove elements or painted colors to abstraction over portraits,” Declan explained. “He had a work,  _ Mme Kupka among Verticals _ , on a canvas large enough to paint some, though not all, life-size portraits. It began as an unfinished portrait of his wife, traditional and realistic, a visual recreation. He never finished in, not like that. It sat until he found a way he felt truly represented her. The final work is so covered in color that only her face can be seen and that nearly entirely obscured. Rather than reproducing her form, he demonstrated who she was, conveying the feeling,” Declan took a moment to phrase it precisely, “of who she was to him. No one else could paint that, no one else could see her the way he saw her. That feeling, that no one else could see, not even those who met her, was what that portrait shared with the world. That makes it not only a portrait of their love but one that enriches others’ lives. They need only recognize that feeling again, with someone else.”

Declan paused, both the painting and the sketch visible in his mind. He didn’t know the words to convey the image of the portrait to her. His fingers itched in his pocket. The small screen couldn’t do the work justice either, but it could convey a sense of how much she was missing, how much seeing it in person in New York could tell. No matter how many words he collected, they always failed him. They left Declan wanting more, ever hungry. He had no such story of his own. Speaking had transfixed him, distracting his attention from Jordan, from the situation they were in, from what she was painting on the canvas. What did it look like? Still a sketch? A portrait? Something else? He leaned forward, the breach between them but a few steps.

Jordan caught his eye, her face quirking into something like a smile. Something predatory and charged. Her brush turned in her hand, held away from the canvas, while she studied him. Perhaps she considered doing the same—obliterating him in color, a work of art that few if any would recognize as him. Declan wanted her to obliterate him. He wanted to see her in the portrait. He doubted she could readily and openly articulate her feelings. She could paint, if she let herself. She had more art, more life, in her than she let out. Declan wanted to see what she could do in an original. Something beyond the dreamt wonder and feeling of  _ The Dark Lady _ .

Briefly, a spike of panic ran through him. Her work, the forgeries that Declan had seen, were all portraits and less abstract than Kupka’s early 1910s work. It was not meant as an insult, and as foolish as it was to let a Lynch be put down in paint, his monologue was not a tool for his paranoia. Still, her reactions to the paintings he collected, her knowledge of the artists, the way Jordan reflected the most private and personal aspects of himself, what he never let out of the attic, felt like something in common. Declan hadn’t ever felt more seen. Did that bridge the gap between them—the dreamt artist, a copy, and the eldest son, nothing at all? Only what his family needed. Nothing more, nothing less. Declan could take care of Jordan, and he could tell her stories, but that was all. He never let himself have intimacy built on truth.

Jordan switched her paintbrush, freshly cleaned, into her other hand, stepped around the canvas toward him, and pressed her palm low against his sweater. Both standing, Declan met her gaze and couldn’t break it. He held his breath, as though exhaling would disturb the moment between them. Her lips curled up, and Declan shivered. Small flecks of paint stained the flower tattoo around her neck. His stomach needed an antacid to curb its anxiety. Each finger burned cold against his skin, and goosebumps grew under her palm. “Why Kupka?”

Declan’s heart fought its confines. His earlier words about  _ Mme Kupka Among Verticals _ were so suggestive he nearly panicked. “From about the same time as the painting, there’s a sketch, in the collection at the National Gallery, in the back,” he backpedaled. “The model is presumed to be Mme Kupka. It’s called  _ Reclining Nude _ . I think it could be from a series of sketches Kupka made, studies, before working on the portrait.” He ran out of words, stopped. His heart beat wild. Her eyes dipped, and her smile grew.

“What was the pose?” Jordan asked.

The sketch returned to his memory, and Declan considered what words portrayed the evocative elements. “She’s laying on her back, nothing else well defined. One arm rests loosely, elevated above her body. The other is bent, hand near her face. She’s looking up, and the perspective is from above, like a person standing over her at her feet. They are pressed against each other, and the expression is unclear—what she’s thinking or feeling is just out of reach.”

“Show me,” Jordan said. He took a step back, considering the space in the barn. The hem of his trousers were already wet and lightly soiled with dirt. His shoes—Declan tried not to think about his shoes. It had been a necessary evil, but inflicting the floor of this barn on them, after everything else, felt like cruelty toward clothing that had done nothing to deserve it.

Her hand held the edge of his sweater and shirt. They were still close enough that her grip didn’t stretch the fabric. “Show me,” Jordan dared.


	10. A Little Intimacy, as a Treat

His face slid blank with confusion. A natural reflex. After a moment, Declan glanced between Jordan’s hand and her face. This was a bad idea, a dangerous one. A shoot out could begin at any moment, and redressing ate away precious time. Fleeing naked had as little appeal. The practical, responsible answer was no. Declan felt the weight of the moment between them. He had told himself he couldn’t love a dream—another dream—and he had promised to take care of Jordan, if the worst happened to Hennessy. He was a liar—about one. Perhaps both. 

“Yes,” Declan said.

He pulled off the charcoal gray sweater and folded it neatly. Declan evaluated their surroundings again and despaired of the thin film of dust covering most of the room. The grassy floor was no better. His jacket had been left behind, unavailable to act as a sacrificial lamb. Jordan coughed, forced, and Declan returned his attention to catch sight of her bare shoulders, her neck tattoo bright. He accepted her leather jacket, warm to the touch, and set it on the floor/ground some feet away from the canvas. The holster unclipped from his belt, safety still on, to start the stack. His sweater followed. Declan stood, looking sidelong, and reached for the top button of his shirt. His fingers moved slowly, evenly, and easily. The first button revealed the size of the bruise on his neck. The second his collar bones. The third began demonstrating the price he had paid for being outmatched in not one but two fights. His pause, after the last button, came with another glance at Jordan. She was scraping her work off the canvas, stripping it to begin again, but she glanced his way while she worked.

Properly, the shirt would have been hung up, but propriety had fled the Barns when it had been made. Declan folded it and set it atop the sweater. His watch told him nothing new; there wasn’t the time for this. The nice watch, along with his phone—no new messages—from one pocket and keys from the other, were plucked off one by one. They sat quietly next to the growing pile on Jordan’s jacket; Declan paused, crouched, then untied his shoes and pulled them off. His socks got dirty and stained, on the short grass. That was fine, Declan lied. Barefoot and shirtless, he stood again and considered. The pounding in his chest had grown louder; he could barely swallow. Colors danced before his vision.

After another breath, his hands went to his belt, unbuckling it. Declan stepped out of the trousers and folded them. They would still get creased, with the vaguely gun shaped bulge showing through them. That was fine, he repeated. Considering the final step, his eyes closed a moment. He took a breath, then pulled his boxer briefs off as well. He folded them with the same care and attention as the rest and took a moment to breathe.

Reclining Nude and its pose sat in his mind. The barn lacked a sofa, daybed, or any appropriate furniture whatsoever. He oriented himself by imagining Jordan as the viewer—the painter—and first sat, then lay back on the grass, his feet pointed toward her, his head back and away. One arm rested on the pile of clothes, as though a pillow or a cushion. He stared up at the rafters, the natural sunlight piercing the space around him. It was late enough into Virginian autumn not even a direct beam blinded him. It posed the rather serious question, in his own voice, of ‘what the actual fuck was he doing?’ This was so far past spinning out of control Declan wasn’t sure how to quantify it. He’d broken. The world was broken, and, in a generous assessment, Declan Lynch could do damn near nothing about it.

Jordan had returned to her paintbrushes, and her quick glances toward Declan took on a different tone. He raised his left arm, until his hand rested in the air above his shoulder, and let his thoughts wander. How had the model for Mona Lisa had occupied her mind as she sat for hours? Had Leonardo da Vinci preferred his models to talk or to be quiet? Glancing back at Jordan, the toned muscles in her arm flexing and relaxing with her movements on the canvas, Declan knew her answer.

“This reminds me of Sylvia Sleigh’s work,” Declan spoke slowly. Jordan glanced back at him to check some detail, as she had previously when painting him. Her smile remained subtle curves. They barely moved her face, as the previous smiles had, but were softer at his words. Pleased, he dared to hope and prayed it wasn’t self-delusion. “She worked in New York City, starting in the sixties until her death in 2010. The era’s zeitgeist was Pop Art, but her work was realistic and raw. She made paintings that turned the Masters on their heads.

“The Masters objectified women, painting them with whatever proportions and shape they saw as ideal. Artworks of Venus weren’t about the models. They weren’t about whatever real historical woman the painters considered ideal. The models were little more than figure studies, and the women depicted were objects more than persons. Sylvia painted men in the same poses:  _ the Rokeby Venus _ ,  _ The Turkish Bath _ ,  _ Venus and the Lute Player _ , to name a few,” Declan slowly layered the elements of Sylvia Sleigh’s voice over his own. First her cadence, the speed and rhythm of her voice. Then her accent, early Welsh vowels mixed with British pronunciations overlaid with non-rhoticity from decades in New York. “She used classic motifs, even when not referencing a specific work. Unlike the Masters, however, she humanized her models, showing imperfections and details like tan lines and body hair. Not only were her depictions so specific people could recognize her models by sight, she named the artwork after them. Some critics complained it wasn’t truly feminist—that the models were people Sylvia knew meant they couldn’t be objectified as much as the models in the classics. They implied that such objectification was necessary to invert the misogyny properly, clinging to the disparity of power between the sexes, between people,” at last, he recreated her exact mannerisms and quirks, his voice that of a mockingbird, “They missed Sylvia’s point—‘to portray men and women as intelligent and thoughtful people with dignity and humanism that emphasized love and joy,’ to keep the desire from those masters without the objectification, to transform the pose so it was no longer humiliating but comfortable.” 

He was charged, sure to produce static electricity on contact. The ground didn’t quench the thrill of those words. Declan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “She painted many well known people, naked and clothed, as well as personal friends. Incredibly, though she gave Paul Rosano’s name to her portraits of him and depicted him twenty-five times in finished works over three years when he came over to her house and studio three to four times a week, we know little about him. He was an aspiring artist, usually described as a rock musician, moonlighting as a live model for figure drawings in New York in the early seventies. They met at an art workshop, and their relationship took off from there,” Declan paused.

“To interrupt myself, her portrait  _ Double Image: Paul Rosano _ was displayed in winter 1975, in the Bronx County Museum of Arts ‘The Year of the Woman’ show in its fourth year. Owen McGivern, presiding justice of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, First Department, demanded the museum, housed in the rotunda of the Bronx County Courthouse, remove the show for explicit male nudity. It wasn’t just about her painting, but Sleigh’s portrait, a poster with a ‘four-letter word,’ a painting of an interracial couple having sex, and a map of political and racial violence in the United States over three centuries were named most offensive,” Declan’s thoughts hardly showed on his face. That was his habit, even when he let himself feel anything at all.  He thought that the liste d works —rather than being anti-American as declaimed—represented the country well. “Bureaucracy takes time, and back then people couldn’t immediately make a hashtag. So by the time the complaints came to light, having wound their way slowly through the system, the show was slated to be taken down the next day. That made it an easy call for the museum to support the show and keep it up the whole twenty-four hours more to display it for the full length of time it was scheduled. Still, she got interviewed about it. Her response to questions was ‘I wonder if the judge would object to a female nude? I don't see why male genitals are more sacred than female.’ A mic drop response which stands as true today as in 1975. As much as people credit  _ Game of Thrones _ for showing male nudity, it’s overwhelmed by the amount of naked female bodies that serve no purpose except to titillate the audience.” Someone always spoke about it at film criticism club. It wasn’t even a film. Imagining her perspective, Declan could see himself entirely naked on the floor/ground of a barn. It was not the time to discuss HBO.

Their eyes met, and Jordan’s focus slid slowly down his body and back up. Neither spoke a few moments. Declan swallowed. Her eyes returned to the canvas. “Getting back on track,” Declan let the familiar words ease him back into conversation, “What I said is about all that most art critics know about Rosano. Back in the day, before the internet, that was even more true. Even today, if you look for information about him, you find her art, you find articles about Sylvia Sleigh. I’ve found a little more. This exception comes from an article that links to a music blog. The article itself unfortunately ends on a line that misses the point of Sleigh’s work entirely—objectifying Rosano because he’s a stranger to most of us. The blog ’The Trick is to Keep Going’”—the trick was to believe the blog’s title, except about life, not only music—“has an archive of his posts, mostly about his music. The properly motivated fan could take his commentary on his music and track down the music itself to analyze and theorize more about him. It’s possible, but it’s small, not well known. Most people who see her portraits of him—who study her work—know little to nothing about him.”

He paused, confident and sure. For all the talk led there, for all that main point stayed true through all twists and turns, it wasn’t the final twist nor the only theme. “We actually have some quotes from him about Sylvia and sitting for her. She not only engaged him in conversation—about art, music, and life—but told him she did so with all her subjects. That was part of her process. She painted better the better she knew her subject. It wasn’t enough to see them or to deduce who they were from their bodies. Their bodies were only truly portrayed when she knew them personally. That’s why, whether they started as strangers or friends, her subjects all became close to her. The act of painting them was an intimate one.” Slowly he set down the mannerisms, sounding once more like himself. They were his words from someone else’s mouth and his feelings shared under the illusion of distance. Jordan parsed its meaning. That was how they shared themselves, glimpses of a shard of truth behind the veneer of a lie.

His skin prickled under her gaze, and the cool weather kept away further embarrassment. “That was a much better story,” Jordan said, “than the one you told after lunch.” His cheeks burned, but he swallowed back the acid clawing its way up his throat.

“That story was told in my father’s style,” Declan said. “Bullshit.” The topic lay there before them. Neither of them carried it forward. Niall Lynch, murdered, belonged to the world outside the Barns, the world that wanted to kill the people they cared about most.

Her eyes stayed on the canvas, focused on controlled strokes. They had said they wouldn’t talk about  _ The Dark Lady _ or its maker. Niall Lynch was a black hole. “Do you think they’re going to die?” Jordan asked.

Ronan and Hennessy and what they were doing was a different black hole. It threatened to tear each of them apart, but together, they danced on the edge of a cliff. “I always fear… the worst will happen,” Declan said, measuring his words out carefully. Since learning about his origin, Matthew had done the same—imitating Declan’s coping mechanism when words were wholly inadequate. Declan let those moments pass without comment and slide into a mental graveyard—where the truth existed but could not be talked about. “And the worst,” he continued slowly, “has gotten steadily more specific and detailed.” With effort, he was able to continue more smoothly, the very calmness in his voice a soothing lie. “It’s out of my hands—our hands—how it will go. All I can do to make it less awful,” his voice was numb, monotone, “is to mitigate how bad the worst outcome can be. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I cannot stand to lose you and to lose Matthew if that happens. There wouldn’t be anything left.” Just Parrish’s silence—perhaps he was dead too—and their best intelligence coming from the hitman who bashed his father’s head in outside the front door. Declan had trashed his education and skipped work for Matthew and Ronan so many times it was a feat that he was still enrolled and gainfully employed.

It didn’t matter that he’d promised Hennessy. Declan had only met her that once at the diner, and he lied more easily than he ate breakfast. He would take care of Jordan because she was Jordan not because she was Hennessy’s dream. She was too alive to sink with Hennessy’s ship. Jordan had been bailing water for years. She deserved to live. “I want you to live,” Declan said.

His watch ticked off the seconds, and Declan could imagine its faint sound. Jordan nodded, shallowly but decisively. She blinked tears out of her eyes and turned back to the canvas. “Then let’s live,” she declared.


	11. Portrait of a Young Artist

His heart beat in the silence. His skin threatened goosebumps. Declan froze in the pose, unable to move and unsure what he could say. It all threatened to destroy the naive hope he tried to push away. He swallowed and words failed him. Jordan said nothing until the silence stretched long and thin and more chances to end it had slipped through his fingers than he could count. “I’m saying I’ll do it. I’ll live,” Jordan’s face was tight. “So long as I’m living, not just surviving, not just drawing existence out, I’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive.”

She looked straight through him. “So let’s live,” Jordan declared again. “Here and now.”

Declan swallowed again. The expectation blazed brightly. Reclining nude in a barn, his usual armor was gone, and he had no idea how to meet those words, that expectation. He had never truly lived. Ecstasy, sharp as broken glass, sliced through his veins and pierced his heart. Feeling bloomed in its wake, pooling into the terror and horror—calling that number, going to the Fairy Market, trespassing with Jordan in the middle of the night, meeting with Boudicca. That was how the world broke. It courted death. Living—with his criminal inclinations, his father’s legacy—was the quickest way to die.

Spinning the future from his past romantic endeavors twined with memories of recent days, Declan could see it ending the way it always ended: Jordan upset when he couldn’t provide what she wanted followed not by tear-stained reddened cheeks of Ashleys yelling at him but Jordan stalking away to some private part of the Barns, Declan getting dressed, people with guns attacking them, and fleeing the Barns with Matthew and Opal with no idea where Jordan was, whether she was alive or staining the Barns like the dead girls in that mansion.

That future congealed in his stomach. Declan stared up at the sky, lessening the strain. “L'homme est la nature prenant conscience d'elle-même,” he spoke carefully, the accent belonging to a vendor he had met in Berlin. The words came from a revolutionary geographer or, more accurately, a revolutionary and a geographer. His thesis in six tomes had argued geography shapes people’s development, on a minutely local level. What did that mean when someone could dream geographic features? The Barns had shaped him, Ronan, and Matthew, but their father had dreamt it. Perhaps it was another way of saying their father had shaped who they had become. No one from Avalon could reveal who they really were or where they came from without bringing about its destruction.

“You are a dream, but you aren’t a copy of Hennessy,” Declan tread over unsteady ground. “Maybe your face is, but you’ve had a decade of your own experience. It was plain as day in the diner: you’re like me.” He paused, not for effect, but because the words stripped him down more than losing his clothes. It was dangerous, playing with the truth like this. It threatened to turn into a lie at any moment. “You’re doing anything, everything, you can to keep your family alive,” Declan carefully wove his words to soften that the rest of her family, everyone except Hennessy, was dead. He doubted anyone left in London counted. They had been on their own.

“That’s what  _ The Dark Lady _ was about,” Declan said. He didn’t ask her to confirm—it hadn’t worked, or else she wouldn’t have returned it—but continued on. “Saving Hennessy. Ending her nightmare. That and however many other things you’ve done.” He glanced at the flower tattoos at her neck. Each one could have been an attempt to do something different. At least, once Hennessy knew it was killing her. “I don’t need to know what they were,” he eased the tension. “The point’s that you did them, you’ve been doing them for years.

“Their needs, their lives, their safety have subsumed your dreams, your life, what you have considered doing. Painting copies, forgeries, fits right in with that. If a forgery’s doing its job, no one knows. No one knows who painted it. No one knows the artist. Hundreds or thousands of people have seen your work, none the wiser,” he paused, considering the little luxuries he had permitted himself over the years. 

“Perhaps I have too. Not just the Sargent and  _ The Dark Lady _ . Earlier, before our paths ever crossed,” Declan stared at her considering. “Not any of the National Art Gallery exhibits. They vet their pieces too well. The Virginian Exposition? That had a lot of lesser known artists whose reach didn’t extend beyond Virginia and DC.” Jordan said nothing, but her face softened as she listened. “Something outside DC? Most of the galleries in Alexandria feature living artists. Perhaps a piece at Gallery Sancerre. A Pino Daeni?” Declan judged her reaction for a sign he had gotten something right. Getting it wrong improved the mood in the room.

“The best bet, perhaps, would be that private collection, the one by the children’s book author, Morgenthaler or something like that. 10Fox. I don’t know exactly what artists they have, but it’s full of art precisely expensive enough to turn an interested buyer’s home into the kind of place they can casually not brag about,” he said. Those sorts of homes were always used for events; opening their doors for events showed it off to people who envied that fantasy of life. Declan was aware many such people liked the sound of  _ Congressman _ , but his compulsive privacy spared him hypocrisy. It did the job they claimed, to people who believed angry proletariat art or American tragedy was enough to render themselves interesting. He had saved it for last, and the small smirk in Jordan’s smile informed him he was right.

“You don’t make big splashes. You dress boldly, burnished—blindingly bright. So much so that you are forgotten. The story, the experience, might stay with someone, but the details won’t. When you’re working, their eyes are drawn to your art, not the artist,” Declan continued. It was the opposite of his clothes, so bland and unmemorable that he could only work in politics. Along with everyone else in DC.

“They miss the paint under your nails for the tattoos on your fingers. They miss the technique and mastery for the childish pleasure of seeing something recreated ‘like magic.’ They miss the art in thinking like the artist in making a ‘new’ work of theirs for the illusion that there is more for them to consume,” Declan said in a smooth rolling rhythm. “If they peer past the distractions, the sharp outfit, the nose stud, the hair that can distract from the face, that shit-eating grin you give people not to give yourself away, they could see the liveliness in your eyes, the dogged determination and dedication in every stroke of the brush, the way you are utterly and fully aware of yourself.”

That last part ignored the way she got in the attic before Declan took her home. That wasn’t her the way just as Matthew wasn’t defined by his walks to Great Falls. That was what they were, not who they were. “L'homme est la nature prenant conscience d'elle-même,” Declan repeated in French again, with the same North German accent. “Nature becoming aware of itself,” Declan translated. “That’s what man is. Élisée Reclus. L'Homme et la terre. The Earth and its Inhabitants. He was known for extreme accuracy and brilliant exposition. I have to give him that, whether he knew of dreams or dreamers or not. He was right about you.” She was no more Hennessy than the New Fenian was his father.

“You’re a whole damn person,” he said.

This time, when the barn was silent, when her brush stopped moving, when Jordan looked at him, when his eyes boldly met hers, Declan wasn’t the vulnerable one. No one had told her that before, he guessed. No one else had known it needed to be said.

“You don’t mean that,” Jordan said quietly. He remembered the cold latte in the attic, what had happened before they had fled back there for Matthew’s life and theirs. The sinking sense she wasn’t a person—wasn’t like him. In the Shenandoah Cafe, Declan had met Hennessy and seen the two of them side by side; the painful truth had become the lie, a way to hold himself apart, without enough intimacy to doom him.

“I might wish I didn’t, if something happens,” Declan admitted.

She glared at him, not asking what that meant. He lay there, holding the same pose, as her jaw slowly relaxed and the tension loosened around her eyes. “You cannot say things like that,” Jordan said more softly. Still, she stared at him. Declan didn’t reply, instead quirking up one eyebrow as if to say, you think I didn’t already know that? It was a terrible idea, one he shouldn’t have granted himself. She had surpassed what he let himself do on dates from the moment they met. Like a tragic Irish hero, he kept doing it. Jordan abandoned her brush in the bucket and set the palette aside.

“Are you done?” Declan asked.

“I haven’t started,” she replied.


	12. Gettin' Down

Declan sat up, one hand reaching back automatically to brush off what dirt and dust and grass and whatever other natural or unnatural leavings had been pressed into his back. The other hand braced the ground as Jordan careened into his lap. Her hand pressed against his chest, crushed between him sitting up and her sitting down. Her knees framed his waist, and blessedly they held enough of her weight not to crush him directly. His heart thundered, and Declan didn’t know what Jordan intended. He was already naked, for nominally artistic reasons. “Jordan,” Declan said, her ear next to his mouth.

He sat back enough to see her face, even close as they were. She leveraged herself on the hand pressing hard against his chest. It hurt, where it overlapped bruises, but Declan had trouble distinguishing the sensation from the unknown and wild terror that they were abandoning caution. Jordan sat up a little more, so her hand could slide across his chest, over his heart. The skin lacked a bruise there. Jordan also reached up, the warmth of her left hand against the side of his neck. Her thumb caressed his cheek, and her fingers slid into his hair. She leaned forward. Their noses nearly touched, and Declan’s eyes closed. They each closed the gap, and he pressed his lips against hers. He needed to track down some chapstick. Her lips were soft, but her tongue was insistent, pushing his mouth open. The jolt that ran through him felt akin to a defibrillator, from his neck through his heart to his chest.

His hand cupped her face, and Declan pulled back until they gained enough space between them to talk. “Jordan,” Declan repeated. His heart was racing, and while he could pull his usual moves easily to continue what they were doing, those actions reminded him of all the blonde girls who wanted to get to know him better but never could. Niall’s voice came to mind—drinking a Budweiser and drinking a Guinness—both counted as drinking beer, but the two weren’t the same. That parable felt more true here with Jordan than sitting in a smoky pub. “What are we doing?”

“Living,” Jordan said. With that word, the pull on the back of his head grew stronger. Her brows furrowed when it wasn’t enough. “Not putting off to tomorrow what we can do today,” she said with a weak grin. It was the smile that rocked a party, where dark lights, alcohol, and the inebriation of seeing what one wanted to see made it foolproof. Declan cupped her face, his thumb running against her cheekbone.

“I haven’t done anything,” Declan spoke slowly, measured out each word, weighed whether it was offensive, and carried on, “quite like this.”

Jordan glanced around. “Had sex in a barn?” she asked, tight but airy. “Me either.”

Declan inclined his head sideways briefly. That was true. “You know about my brothers,” Declan said. “About my dad. About dreamers and dreams and that I’m not either.” He exhaled carefully. Inhaled. “You know about my birth mother, and you met…” He tried not to determine how much the man knew. Or Mór, “the New Fenian.” He breathed again. “You know me more than anyone I’ve ever…” Declan motioned vaguely to them, “Dated.” He was nice about it. He always took them on dates they would remember later, backfilled with whatever generic male celebrity they preferred, before turning the evening toward something more. It was pleasant that way. That was the most, emotionally, they got out of him—a good story or two.

“This has been one hell of a third date,” Jordan said. The humor faded across the sentence. She considered him carefully. “Do you not want to…?” It was casually put, but Declan felt her gaze heating up his face.

“No,” Declan said. “I mean, I do want to. Preferably in a bed, without grass and whatever else digging into my skin.” Just to spite him, the ground had pushed up a small piece of gravel against his ass. With his bodyweight and much of Jordan’s, it made itself uncomfortably known.

“Ah,” Jordan said. She leaned further back and mulled it over. “I haven’t really done this at less than the speed limit. Full steam ahead, however far that was.” Her hand slipped down to his shoulder, and she glanced around.

He sat up almost straight, falling back a few inches when he lifted his hand off the ground but catching himself. He rested it around her back, moving deliberately in a lackadaisical fashion. The lacy thing she wore didn’t keep her skin from his fingertips. “Let’s take our time with it,” Declan said, “Enjoy ourselves. Live like we’ll be here tomorrow and the day after that.” He wasn’t confident that would be the case. That was what living was like, right? Acting like the world would still be there the next day.

Jordan’s fingertips dug into his chest. It wasn’t enough to hurt, only sting. “Okay,” she replied slowly. “So what do you want to do—make out like you did with girls in high school? Not quite a toss in the hay?”

Declan laughed unevenly. “I didn’t bring girls back for a toss in the hay,” Declan smiled. He never brought dates back to the Barns. It was a secret. “But kissing would be nice. Maybe let me get the barn off me a little first. We could sit again or test the structural integrity of the walls.” He looked back at Jordan, almost relaxed.

She laughed too. “Sure,” Jordan agreed. She pushed off him to stand up again then offered her hand to pull him up. Declan took it. Standing, he brushed off his legs and butt, which increased his level of hygiene minimally. Jordan circled around him and laughed again. “Grassy ass,” she teased. “I’m not sure what’s better—the grass stains or their imprints.”

Declan gave a self-deprecating smile and reached for his boxer briefs. It was the right choice on all grounds and a large step up from naked. “The things we do for art,” Declan lamented as he pulled them on. That being enough for the moment, he closed the gap between them, his hands rested around her waist, dipping lower. He leaned in, his mouth against her ear. “Still want to make comments about my ass?” he asked. Slowly, he pulled his head back, just enough to kiss her. 

Declan leaned against her, warm despite the chilly air. He took his time, as though nothing hung over their heads and all they had to think about was this. The feel of her pressed against him. Her lips smiling against his. A moment without thinking. Only happiness, however brief.

Her hands reached around and squeezed his ass. “Yeah, it’s got great give,” Jordan said. Declan leaned into her further, so they were closing the distance with a wall, one without the wardrobe or chest to knock into. She was kissing him back, one hand sliding up his spine, a shiver in its wake.

The wood scraped against the back of his hands. One returned confidently to her waist, between the small of her back and the wall. Declan also reached up to brush her hair needlessly away. It fell back against his hand. They kept kissing, breathing when they needed to, but Declan felt he was past the tipping point, his sense of equilibrium lost. He leaned against Jordan, against the wall behind her. He kissed along the edge of her jaw. Then Declan made himself familiar with each of the floral tattoos he could reach around her throat. His back bent, as she leaned back on her toes.

With a sharp huff, Jordan moved beneath him. One leg wrapped around his waist, and Jordan pushed against the ground with a small jump. His hand shifted from her waist for support, and he heaved her up further, so her legs were comfortably wrapped around him. This made it much easier to kiss and nibble at her neck. He paid attention not only to each rose and the empty spot where Hennessy had worn another one but briefly detoured near her collarbones.

Rumbling softly against her skin, Declan brought his mouth back up her neck toward her ear. Jordan’s hands were wrapping into his hair, curls twisted between her fingers. She pulled his head back up to meet him again in a kiss, bruising his lips and wresting control. Declan drowned in it, barely breathing and gasping when she released her tight grip. There were other concerns, vaguely, but he held on as tightly to Jordan and her kisses.


	13. Fraternorum Intermissum

His pulse thundered wildly in his head, and Declan felt Jordan’s brief but desperate gasps for air between kisses move across his jaw to his ear. Nothing else. Then the world crashed back around him with wild thumping. The wall shook and them with it. Declan pulled back from Jordan, taking a step away from the wall and lowering her to the ground. He’d nearly made it to the gun before the raucous shouting drew close.

“DECLAN! DECLAN!” Matthew’s voice rang out, urgent and needy. Images of his brother bleeding out against the side of the barn, of Matthew getting attacked alone, roiled in his gut. Declan took the gun in one hand, his shirt in the other. There wasn’t any better bandage here. “THEY’RE HERE. THEY’RE BACK. THEY’RE ALIVE!” Matthew shouted.

The sheer joy in Matthew’s voice relaxed Declan. Panic ebbed away. Disaster was—at least—temporarily averted. Matthew was okay. Ronan and Hennessy were alive. No one had kidnapped them. Bryde—? Whatever Bryde was up to, he was still playing his game. At least, that was what he was expecting. Declan considered what he wanted to know and began pulling his shirt back on. “You mean Ronan? Hennessy?” Declan projected his voice the way one performed Shakespeare. It wasn’t shouting, but it carried.

Jordan had already left the room, abandoning the palette and brush at the foot of the easel. Declan delayed following her until he’d pulled his trousers on and buckled his belt. Then he checked the safety of his gun, tucked it into the holster, strapped it back to his belt, and pocketed his phone—one new text message—keys, and watch. He buttoned his shirt as he walked to meet Jordan and Matthew at the door.

He paused in the doorway, shirt half-buttoned, seeing movement in the corner of his eye. The gun was out again, safety off. A small girl looking creature with goat legs stepped out of the shadows. The goat legs let him breathe. “Opal,” Declan said, lowering the gun. He frowned and returned the gun, safely, to his side. Declan wasn’t going to shoot her. “How long were you there?” he asked.

Opal shrugged. “I came here when I saw Kerah and not-Jordan-but-Hennessy and the old powerful not-man dreamer approaching,” she said. She met his eyes unapologetic. “Like you asked me,” she added.

Declan smoothed his frown. He didn’t like that Opal had spied on them kissing. Perhaps she had learned not to interrupt Ronan when he and Parrish were preoccupied, but the part about granting privacy had been skipped. “Come out and tell me next time, if we have a next time,” Declan said. He had no idea what would happen next. Bryde was an atomic bomb. Sure he wanted something from Declan’s brother, something from Hennessy, something possibly from every dreamer in the world. They hadn’t died yet, so they could probably get some mileage out of him, but no one had the abort codes or knew proper safety procedures. Not even anyone at the Fairy Market.

“You needed  _ that _ more,” Opal said, nodding toward the other room, the art studio. Declan ducked back inside, and the back of the easel tempted him. The murmur of voices grew softer, and he still needed his shoes, his sweater. Jordan needed her jacket. 

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. No peeking,” she said. She followed his gaze to the abandoned palette, the open bottles of turpentine, the whole mess of it. “Come on, come on,” Jordan repeated as she closed jars. “They’re here.” Her face radiated joy and terror. Life.

Declan held her gaze as he finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it in. He shrugged into the nice sweater and picked up the shoes and jacket. Handing over her jacket as they walked, they went so quickly they almost sprinted out of the barn to catch up with Matthew and Opal. Matthew and Opal exchanged the looks younger siblings got when they discovered something. Opal’s imitated young Ronan to a T. “How’d you know we were here?” Declan asked.

Matthew giggled. “I saw you walk into the barn,” he declared. “From the roof,” he clarified at Jordan’s furrowed brow, pointing in the direction of the house. He straightened, for a moment serious and sad, the way he had been the last few days, but the relief of this moment was too much and he collapsed into giggles. Declan brushed back the curls off his face, a fond smile he couldn’t help spreading. Then he switched hands for his socks and shoes and neatened his sweater. It hid most of the shirt’s wrinkles. “I’m not going to misplace my brother,” Matthew declared, in his best Declan imitation.

Declan laughed and pulled Matthew into a one armed hug. “No, we’re not,” Declan agreed. He eyed the door and exhaled softly. “Can we wait a moment?” he asked. The small shuffle they had been making toward the open barn door stopped, and three sets of eyes stared at Declan’s bare feet. He swallowed back the blush with practiced ease. Saying anything only called further attention to it. Declan set down one shoe, stuffed the socks in an empty pocket (now lumpy and unappealing), and balanced on one foot. He brushed off the dirt and detritus, as much as he could. At least, there was no gravel. He slipped on the shoe, sock free, and repeated the process on the other side. Only once shod, he knelt and tied the laces.

Despite the heat in his face at the attention, Declan stayed calm and stood. By his posture, someone could have guessed full brogues were meant to be worn without socks, the way Dick Gansey wore his top siders. Neither Gansey then nor Declan now were anywhere near a boat, where they might wish to avoid soaking their socks with seawater, but Declan hadn’t been about to walk up to a powerful stranger barefoot.

Matthew laughed again. Jordan was smirking. Opal frowned. “Do I have to wear shoes?” she asked unenthusiastically. Her weight shifted from hoof to hoof.

Shoes weren’t going to hide her legs, and Declan expected Bryde already knew about Opal. With the strange sensation of pride, he considered the possibility Ronan had told her to take care around strangers. It was a small thing, but it pleased Declan immensely. “Not for this, no,” Declan said. He leaned down toward her, whispering conspiratorially, “We need you at your best.”

Relief then pride filled her posture. As Jordan tromped fastest across the fields leaving deep rounded indentations as a trail behind her, Declan led Matthew and Opal after her. “How’d they look?” Declan asked. Jordan stopped at those words, either paralyzed by the question or starving for an answer.

“Alive,” Opal said.

“They have swords!” Matthew declared, miming one slashing through the air. Opal nodded in agreement but stared over the rolling landscape of the Barns, rather than facing Declan. Matthew sounded like he was using a lightsaber.

“He’s bigger than he looks,” Opal said. “The old one.”

Declan nodded, “I trust your judgment.” He met her eyes then Jordan’s. They both shrugged slightly. Whatever they were into, they were into it together. Declan doubted Bryde cared much for any of them in their small troupe—two dreamt people, a psychopomp, and someone with nothing to do with dreaming. Still, he’d stepped out of dreams into this world. Declan’s world. It was broken and soaked in gasoline, but there was no line he wouldn’t cross for his brothers’ sake. They weren’t alone, not quite. They had each other’s backs. Declan and Jordan had kept Ronan and Hennessy alive this long. They weren’t about to stop.

Declan and Jordan’s shoulders brushed against each other as they walked. Carefully, Declan let the back of his hand brush against the back of hers. She leaned in and whispered, “You’ve got a bit of paint on your neck.” He closed his eyes and sighed.

**Author's Note:**

> I made a playlist for this fic, with one song per chapter. You can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf4FSxnb_iWCoi_cG2DILACe4hgcqUaLs).
> 
> You can also see Lena's amazing art for the fic [posted here](https://lenaisanerd.tumblr.com/post/622195135220989952/thew8tinggame). Amaaaaaazing.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


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